All right, welcome everybody. We have our good friend doctor Bo Branson rejoining.
And if you're hearing a little bit of echo, doctor Branson, don't
worry. I'm gonna mute when you're talking and you won't hear me echoing on
your end. Can you hear me? Okay? Right now, Yeah,
I can hear you. Fine, okay, cool, all right, So
welcome back. For those that don't know, doctor Bo Branson is a good
friend of ours who teaches in Indiana. And remind me of the name of
the school. Sorry, it's Breshah, that's right, excuse me. And
Dr Branson's specialty is analytic philosophy, but he also does a lot of research
into the Cappadocians. His thesis was on particularly Gregory of Nissa and the question
of the Trinity and the logical problem the trinity and the question of the the
monarchy of the Father in Cappadocians, then particularly in Gregor Vanessa. So you
had a new piece out that you've just sent me that will be in a
future publication, and that is four Views on the Trinity. Correct, So
I think the title is one God, three person's four views? Now is
that one God? A reference to the I'm just joking, is that the
reference specifically to William Lane three headed dog God and the the four views,
does that count as a separate entity. They're making it a five headed figure.
So there's the essence, and we're trying to work up to the the
nine person God had Anny him or whoever who said each person of the trinity
is its own trinity or you're muted. I think if you confused energies with
persons, you could say that the seven spirits of God are all hypostaces,
and then you could have a seven. Yeah, we get Yeah, try
to just try to the numbers. Now, the four the four reviews.
So it'll have William Lane, Craig, William Hasker Dale, Tuggy, and
myself. So which will be is interesting and uh, you will be presenting
I assume the monarchical trinitarian view there, correct, Yeah, yeah, so
I the the title of my chapter is God and his Word and his Spirit
are one God, which is a quote from John of Damascus to maybe I'll
say a little bit about it, and just I think you maybe I heard
you say that. In my dissertation I talked about Gregoranis and the Monarchy of
the Father. In my dissertation, I really only focused on what are called
the inseparable operations or synergy, so the unity sort of the response that Gregory
Andissa gives into a blavious where he's talking mainly on my interpretation about the energies,
the divine energies, and that that's kind of his answer in that to
the to the challenge, to the to the trinity in that work. Then
later I did a bunch of podcasts or video things about the Monarchy of the
Father that I really didn't talk about it at all in the dissertation. So
some people sort of know me because they've looked at the dissertation, and some
people know me from the videos, and they're sort of like two different things.
And I think a lot of people either think that I don't I reject
one, or I only believe in the other, or or they don't see
how they can fit together or what. So part of what I do in
this in my lead essays, I try to kind of show sort of a
bigger picture, and it's all kind of consolidated just in the lead essays,
So I go through kind of different senses in which you would say there's one
God and so sort of had it all fits together so hopefully right. And
for those that don't know, we'll get into this here in a little bit
with some depth. But basically the responses to Dale Tuggy are in regard to
his Unitarianism. So he is sort of the leading i guess, academic Unitarian,
and that's the position that basically the one God is identical to just the
Father and so there's no other distinctions in the trinity or basically just a form
of arianism. And so if you want to highlight or elucidate any of that,
if I've stated his position, yeah, well he yeah, his view
is even lower Christology, I guess, and then arian is his view is
just that Jesus is a human. They don't like it when you say purely
or they don't like what you say merely human because they're like it was not
merely human. He's awesome, but but but it's still like it's really cool
God. Yeah, he's he's not just a just another dude. But but
yeah, he just thinks Jesus is a is a humans created you know in
four BC or whenever he's born, and you know, uh, anointed by
God. And YadA YadA. But but a creature, right, And I
guess his I I really don't. I don't quite get the view on the
Holy Spirit. But they'll say something like the Holy Spirit is just the Father
in action or something like. It's just kind of talk, so they don't
really Most Unitarians of his, like his ILK, I guess, kind of
don't think of the Holy Spirit as really a separate person. They just think
of him as like an energy or just metaphorical for God doing stuff or something
I'm probably not doing. Just to the idea of anyway, that's that's the
idea. So there's really not a trinity or on his view, Yeah,
I think you said on your lectures, they massage it. They kind of
put it to the side. The question of the spirit. Yeah, I
don't. Yeah, I still don't quite quite get the view. But yeah,
that's that's the his the view he's defending so mainly in the in the
book, I guess to just if you want me to mention kind of what
other people do in the book, I can go to my paper more detail
it. He he just gives kind of like twenty facts about the New Testament
that he thinks all sort of are more expected on the hypothesis that they were
unitarians then on the hypothesis that they were trinitarians. So it's mostly just sort
of New Testament stuff, and he's kind of trying to make that case.
And actually William Lane Craig's lead essay, I mean, I'm kind of disappointed
in it in a way, but it ninety something percent of it is just
him talking about the New Testament and the divinity of Christ, which, on
the one hand is nice because it's he's all up on that, you know,
New Testament scholarship and so forth, and he consolidates a lot of scholarship
and summarizes it, and so it's that's nice that he just kind of makes
this big case for the divinity of Christ and then kind of also the Holy
Spirit and spends a little bit of time saying why the Holy Spirit is a
separate, distinct person or whatever. I mean, He's got like, I
don't know, a page and a half or something of like his model of
the Trinity, So just like for me to respond to it, so just
to I guess, I'll say, like William Hasker's response to Craig is like
two pages and he just is like, yeah, I pretty much agree with
all stuff and I so for me, I wanted to say something about his
view of that Trenty, so I kind of had to dig into, you
know, other things that he's written. So anyway, I mean, on
the one hand, it's nice that he's kind of did that, but there's
a little a little weak on the details about his actual view of how what
is the Trinity? Why is it's not trite? He isn't, etcetera.
And William Hasker he has the book I forget what it's called, Metaphysics and
the tri Personal God. Yeah, I think I think is that I think
I have that one. Yeah, And he kind of, I mean largely
his lead essay is kind of summarizing what he argues in that book, but
from a little bit different angle. But I see, yeah, well I've
got your say that you send it to me, so I've got it pulled
up here. I thought I had it, and so I'm not blaming you.
It wasn't. It was a misunderstanding. I'm looking at it now and
I say that you are you kind of in the very opening salvo there answered
some of the questions that I had when I called you about thirty minutes ago.
So I had a question about, you know, some of the phraseology
that I remember from John Damascus, like, you know, God and his
word and his Spirit are in reality one God. I remember reading that a
couple of years ago, and so listening to the lectures, I was thinking,
you know, it seems like I remember somebody, maybe Johnamascus, speaking
that way. But before we get into that, one thing I'd like to
point out is that you said, you know, in the in the lectures,
you pointed out that one of the projects that you really want to work
towards, or to do, is to inform the debate that goes on in
the philosophic and analytical sphere about the trinity with history. You can't really divorce
divorce trinitarian theology from particular Church history, but particularly the Cappadocians and their contribution.
So maybe you could speak to that a little bit. Yeah, definitely,
that's I spend a whole chapter in my dissertation talking about that, and
I have my first actually publication was basically a kind of reworking of that chapter
in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, just a paper called ahistoricity in analytic theology,
and so, yeah, I guess my view on that is i'd make
a distinction between what you might call philosophy of religion in a general kind of
sense versus what I would call philosophical theology. So philosophy of religion kind of
ask these very general questions about, you know, is there a God,
is religious belief rational, and so forth, And those are questions that are
a lot of it in reality is sort of tied to a more Western like
Judeo Christian Islamic sort of paradigm or whatever. But it's largely, you know,
like it's pretty general questions that you could just ask, you know,
without worrying too much about what religious tradition you're talking about. But questions in
philosophical theology are really questions about like a particular theological view that's it's always going
to be embedded in some kind of historical tradition, right, So I just
try to argue that it really doesn't make much sense to try to ask these
sorts of questions without worrying about the history of that tradition. Yeah, and
to kind of the summary that I give of it in this paper is just
The basic thing that I argue is what you end up with in analytic philosophy.
I think a lot of the times is just a non secutor argument where
people will say something like, here's my model of the Trinity. My model
is logically consistent, therefore the doctrine of the Trinity is logically consistent. Or
like, my model of the Trinity does X, Y and z, therefore
the doctor of the Trinity does. And it's I mean that just has the
logical form like A is F, therefore B is F. It's like,
well, that's you have to establish that there's some connection between your model of
the trinity and the actual doctrine of the Trinity. Yes, right, and
really no one people might pay lip service to that, but like no one
really tries to do that, or very I shouldn't say no one, but
very few. I will say this about William Hasker. I disagree with some
of his interpretations of Gregor Ivnissa and so forth, but like at least he
tried to do that. William Lane Craig just doesn't care, right not to
kind of poor yeah, I mean, he just explicitly like rejects the Nicene
creed. Then Asian Creed. The Council's right, Well, he's identified as
a Pullinarian for a long time. Yeah, he's up hearing about Christology.
So it's just like, yeah, I just regal. I mean, so
it's just kind of like, yeah, I just who cares? But and
I mean my thing then is like, well, then what is the doctrine
of the trinity? Like what do we mean by that? And that's actually
something that came up in his response to me, which I still have to
We're all supposed to send in our final things by like November or I guess
in October thirty first, so soon to be wrapped up. But but yeah,
my, I mean, he just talks about what's in the Bible,
and basically my my response to that, I don't know how the word count
is getting kind of slim, so I don't know how much I can respond
to him. But but my my basic response there is like, if if
I were to decide at some point that Dale Tuggy was right all along and
like the New Testament doesn't say anything about the divinity of Christ, or if
if I decided what the Bible says about the Trinity doesn't really entail. There's
three divine persons or Jesus is divine or something like that. Would I also
describe Would I describe that belief by saying I now believe that the doctrine of
the Trinity doesn't entail that there are three divine persons. I wouldn't. That
sounds crazy, right? So that seems to mean that I don't use the
phrase the doctrine of the Trinity to just mean whatever the Bible says about the
Trinity or else. If I decided the Bible doesn't really say there's three divine
persons, I'd have to say the doctrine of the Trinity doesn't say there's three
divine persons. But that just seems absurd to me, of course, right.
Instead, I ought to describe that by saying, well, I've just
decided that the Bible doesn't teach the doctrine of the Trinity. Yeah, person,
I just say it doesn't teach the doctor of Trinity. I wouldn't say
the doctrine of the Trinity says there's not three divine persons. It just crazy.
Identified about the Trinity is what the Bible says about the Trinity, rather
than what the church fathers and councils have said that the Bible says about it's
so anyway. To me, it's just it seems obvious that a phrase like
the doctrine of the Trinity refers to kind of the official doctrine that the church.
Uh. And and people always get weird out there like well the Church
isn't infallible, you know, I'm a Protestant and blah blah blah. And
it's like, well, yeah, I mean I don't have to presuppose that
the Church is infallible just to say that's what the phrase means. Like if
we were talking about the doctrine of transubstantiation or the doctrine of like papal supremacy
or something like, I would say, well, the doctrine of transubstantiation is
whatever the Council of Trent or whatever said. It was like, I don't
think they're infallible. I just think that's what that's what the phraser first to
do. It would be like, you know, if I came up with
a model of transubstantiation and was like, yeah, here's my model. Nothing
happens when the priest says says the word like this is my Baptist model of
transubstantiation. It's like that not the doctrine of transubstantiation. It's not like you've
got a little different model or interpretation. It's just you're just you've just abandoned
the doctrine. Yeah, and I wouldn't people like William Lane Craig would just
be honest just say, yeah, I just reject the doctorum of the Trinity.
Like that's that's I think the proper way to describe it is just,
yeah, you reject the Nicene Creed, you reject the counsel, you reject
you have this view that's kind of in the ballpark of the trinity. So
that's nice, but but you just you reject the doctor of the trendy.
Yeah. I think a lot of that's bound up with two different notions of
you know, first of all, presubsition about what the church is. Christianity
in the Church are just this thing that's kind of in process. We're all
trying to figure it out, sort of quasity and humanist notion that's very popular
and not academia. So we're all part of the church and we're all just
trying to kind of figure out what its doctrines are. And so we have
a system building project, which is what a lot of philosophers and academics are
into, which is I'm gonna I'm gonna invent the system that will you know,
solve the problems and I'll make a name in academia or whatever the motivations
might be. But yeah, I think you nailed it there that you know,
it really makes no sense to divorce you know, the actual historic meaning
of the phrases in the terms, right, I mean, you're I think
you hit on two things that I think are totally right there. One is,
I think there's this kind of like job security for philosophers going on like
that is like, yeah, that's what philosophers want to do, Like we
want to build a system and come up with some creative new solution. Like
that's what's going to get a publication because you came up with this great idea
and like to just say, like to do what I basically try to do
is just be like, yeah, here's what these I said centuries ago.
It's fine, Like that's not like that's not a super publishable you know paper.
And the other thing is, yeah, I think this Protestant mindset of
like Chris, I always think of it as like archaeological, like well,
I guess you could think of it in two different way. I mean,
some Protestants come at Christianity from this what I think of as archaeological point of
view, like this, this religion just blew up and died out at some
point when the evil like Pope Vader and Emperor Constantine. You know, I'm
just ruined everything and let's try to reconstruct it. But I think there's also,
yeah, there's also the kind of attitude of yeah, it's this system,
but like it's this incomplete thing that we're still kind of like working on
or whatever. And then yeah, that leads them to want to try to
conceptualize everything in some way so that there's room for their own kind of creative
thinking and philosophizing about things. And I think when someone like me comes along
and was just like, yeah, but now you're just changing the subject and
this is not really the doctum the trinity anymore, they just kind of react
to that. They don't want to do that. So let's get back to
this question of unitarianism and trinitarianism. Because one of the things that you point
out that you know that Dale Tuggy doesn't really address is the model of the
trinitarian philosophy that the Orthodox Church has. He addresses the social view and the
egalitarian view, and the actual historical doctrine is the monarchical trinitarian view, which
is that the Father is the sole arca, source, principle, an ark
et, cetera. And so you're kind of admitting, you know, in
the lectures that he kind of has a point just in that these other models
are not very good, but he's not actually addressing our model. Would you
want to comment on that a little bit? I know this is all happened
for you, but just for our audience, Yeah, for people who haven't
gone through six hours worth of whatever. Yeah. Basically, over and over
in Dale Tuggy's papers that he's published on the Trinity, like the big,
the big central sort of issue that keeps coming up is that he just thinks,
like in the New Testament, God equals the Father, just same things.
There's two different words for the same same guy. Right, And what
I point out in those podcasts of mine, as I say, I mean,
basically he's right like if you if you do just read the New Testament
and like all I mean, this isn't like in some way, it's not
even really controversial. Like any biblical scholar New Testament scholar is going to say,
yeah, that's right. In the New Testament, just you see God,
it probably is referring to the Father. I mean, there's times when
it might refer the Son, and and Tucky addresses that, and he said,
I mean, all of them are sort of controversial for obvious reasons.
But his thing is sort of like, hey, as a Unitarian, he
just says, like, even if I grant you that there's like a half
a dozen or so references or a dozen references to Christ as God as Theos,
there's something like, you know, it's two or three hundred instances of
the word God in the New Testament, like anytime anytime the context, like
aside from those handful that refer to Christ, anytime like the context makes it
clear otherwise it's referring to the Father. So like when you know, when
Paul says the you know, the love of God, the grace of Jesus
Christ, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, right, well, it's
obviously God means Father and then Jesus in the Holy Spirit. And there's there's
plenty of places like this where it's just clear from the context that they're using
the word God and Father sort of changeably. So, but what he does
is he argues that sort of, by definition, Trinitarianism identifies the one God
with the Trinity, and that you can't, like a trinitarian can't identify God
with the Father. Hold on one second, because I haven't. I have
an ornery cat who's about to if you gotta, if you got a blender,
you could stick him in there a blend. I don't want to want
to blend my cat. I just thinking about that. Will it blend?
Guy? On? So let's see. So so yeah, that, I
mean, that's basically what I argue in those in those podcasts and in a
paper that I published in Theologica, One God, the Father. As I
just say, you know, that's not like, that's not just like an
uncontroversial definition that trinitarianism, you know, by definition says God equals Trinity.
And by definition, if you say God equals the Father, then that's unitarianism.
That's you know, that's a substantive kind of claim because I mean,
partly because I'm saying what the doctrine of the Trinity is is not just whatever
you stipulate because that's kind of what your grandma says about the Trinity, or
like that's what's on the First Baptist Church's website about the Trinity. Like we
have to go back and look and see, like what are these guys say?
And what I argue is that you know, when you go back and
look, actually all the Greek fathers kind of speak in the same way,
like they tend to use the word God to just refer to the Father right
a lot, and and seldom the use of the word God to or like
the one God to talk about the Trinity or describe the Trinity as the one
God is something that kind of develops over time and there's sort of a reason
but behind that and so forth, and anyway, I just point out,
like, look, there's there's the The key issue for Trinitarians is like do
you think there are three divine persons there and they all have the divine nature
and they're not there's no aryan equivocation going on or anything, and yet you
still think that there's, uh, there's only one God And you could and
I just say, look, you could you can have a view like that
where you just say God refer the word God refers to the Father, the
one God in some sense of the term God, like, that's the Father,
but the Son and the Holy Spirit have the same divine nature as the
Father. There's no I mean's you know you can you can still do that.
And he and the thing that's weird, I mean the way the way
that he defined Unitarian and Trinitarian in the past really, I mean literally made
it so that you would count as a Unitarian even if you said there are
three fully equally divine persons, YadA YadA, Like if you say God is
the Father, but the Son and the Spirit have the divine nature equally and
fully blah blah blah, you just count as as a Unitarian automatically. And
I criticize that. In this book, he's he's changed his definitions, he's
tweaked them a little bit so that he he's added in that to count as
a Unitarian, you would have to reject the claim that the Son and the
Holy Spirit are separate, distinct, divine persons. So you can't you can't
believe in the divinity of Christ anymore on his view to be a Unitarian.
So that means I'm no longer a Unitarian, I guess so well, and
on yeah, and for the sake of the audience for those that don't know.
One of the reasons that we stress it in the Orthodox Church that the
Father is the one God, the soul, fount archa and so forth,
not just in disputes over the philioquy, but also we would say is pretty
consistently in scripture. As doctor Branson was noting about the New Testament references to,
you know, to the one God, you know, Paul, the
Father Blights. You know, all gifts come down from the Father Blights,
you know, the one God and Father all Lord Jesus Christ. The Creed
says, we believe in one God, the Father, right, Yeah,
that Paul says for us there is one God, the Father, and one
Lord Jesus Christ. And yeah, even the Creed says, I believe in
one God, the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, right
and so so yeah, one thing that I do in the paper those So
then sometimes people hear that and they think, oh, that means you reject
the view that Jesus is really divine, or you you can't call him God
in any sense, or something like that, And that's that's not the idea
at all. So in this paper, one of the things that I do
is I just kind of go through different senses in which you can use the
word God. So one distinction is sometimes we use the word God as a
subject or as a referring expression. Right, So it's like like you would
say the well like j or you know, the president of the United States
or something like that. It's just you're referring to some individual, right.
Sometimes we use the word God as a predicate, as like a descriptor,
right, so this thing is divine or something. So like you know,
if you say that bail it was the God of the right Philistines who were
whoever he was anyway, or Canaanites, I guess anyway. I mean,
that's just a you know, it's a description like if you or or you
know, like when was it when Elijah's is talking with the prophets of bail,
right, he says, if bail is then such and such or if
you know, if Yahweh is God then or there's a there's an interesting verse
where I think it's to Hezekiah. He's someone says thou art God and not
man? And a lot like in our Bibles, it'll be they always capitalize
God. It's capital G when it's like the true God or something like that
or not they didn't say, sorry, did I say God and not man?
Man and not God? But anyway, it looks like because it's lowercase
in there, man and not God, it looks like you're a human and
you're not this person, this individual. But actually it's it's parallel, right,
It's actually you are human and not divine, is the what's being said.
Even in Hebrew, right, Like the word Adam, you know,
sometimes refers to the individual the first sometime the word Adam just is translated man
because just means a human, right, and so it's it's kind of the
same with God, like sometimes God refers to this some individual, and sometimes
it's just kind of divine. And then I point out there's different senses in
which you can use it as a predicate, Like there's different things that might
mean as a description. So the first thing I talked about having to do
with the monarchy is, you know, early on, well, let me
put it this way. If you if you search through like there's a two
classicists and people use the thing why Greika, which has all these texts from
ancient Greek times all the way up to the fall of Constantinople, and it's
all digitized and you can search through it. Like if you if you search
for the word polythea, which is polytheism, you get like hundreds and hundreds
of hits and going all the way back before Christ and all the way if
you look for the word monothea monotheism, there's like two results and they're both
from like it's like Gregory Palomas and maybe someone else around that time, like
guess you know, in the thirteenth, thirteenth century or whenever it was,
So it's it's barely ever used. So you think, like, well,
what's the deal. I mean, people are talking about polytheism, but they
don't have a word for monotheism. But the thing is, if you go
and look at the places where people talk about monotheism and polytheism, they don't
use the word monotheism. They use the word monarchia. So the contrasting terms
are polytheism versus monarchia. And that goes back all the way to like to
Filow, the Jewish philosopher who was just right before around the time of Christ
and early Christians, when they're worrying about what we would call monotheism. They're
worrying about the monarchia. So like if you read it Pullian again, you
know who's writing against these modalists in the in gets like he talks about,
you know, people using the word monarch He actually kind of makes fun of
people because they're I guess trying to like affect a Greek accent when he and
stuff. And so anyway, the point is like when the when when they're
thinking about is there one God? What they mean is is there one ultimate
source of existence for everything? Right? And so in that sense, uh,
yeah, it's it is just the Father, right. The Father is
the monarchy of the one source. Right, So in that sense, it's
perfectly correct to say there is one God, the Father, right, he's
the one God because he's the one source even of the Son and the Spirit
and that not not in the sense that he created them, not in the
sense that they you know, come into being in time or something, but
in some timeless sense he is the source or the root or the foundation or
the fathers use all these terms like the you know, fountain, the spring
of a fountain. So I just in my response is to tugg I just
say, yeah, that's that's perfectly orthodox to say, right, that there's
one God, the Father in that sense, and that's the sense in which
the Creed say, you know, saying there's one God, the Father.
And even Saint Basil, like when people accused him of being a die theist
or tritheist, he responds by saying, there's one God, because there's one
Father, and that's what's And he even goes on and says, whoever preaches
two first principles preaches two gods, but he says, for us, we
just have one first principle. So we're monotheist, right, we have one
God. There's other senses of the word God too. Where the first thing
I talk about is the divine energies that there's a sense of the word God
where it has to do with a certain kind of power or a certain kind
of activity that God engages in. Gregory and Nissa thinks that that's something like
beholding. There's reasons why I think is that, But anyway, it's not
really important so much what the specific activity is is just that if it predicates
an activity, then that's kind of a different sense of the term God.
And then there's another sense in which it might predicate the divine nature. Which
actually an interesting thing that I found out in doing my research for my dissertation
was all of these pre Nicene church bothers, whenever they talk about what the
word God means, they all deny that the word God used as a predicate,
like, predicates the divine nature of something. They all say, it's
not the nature, it's an activity, it's a certain kind of activity.
It's the Aryans who come up with this and start pushing this idea that it
capes the divine nature because they wanted to use that as an argument against Trinitarians.
So you've got three hypotheses that had the same nature, then that's three
gods because the word God means that nature. Yeah. That that comes up
in the Galwitz book. I think when he goes into the Unomian the way
Unomi is predicated. Uh, you know, we basically says that to call
godfather is to call him basically ingenerate, and so Father just is in generate.
Therefore divine nature just is in generate, and so therefore distinctions must until
you know, being a creature. Yeah, and for Eunumius it's even kind
of crazier because he I mean, he just says this. Well I shouldn't
say whack a doodle on publicly, but anyway, he has a he has
a kind of anyway. He has an extreme view about divine simplicity. So
for him, everything just ends up being the divine essence because God is so
absolutely simple. Whatever you predicate of him is just a divine essence and the
so that's and that's his argument against the capit Ocean view is like, well,
we all agree that the Father is unbegotten, which is kind of their
term for Assey, and everything's identical to everything when it comes to God,
so that has to be the divine nature is just being asse. Right,
And so if you admit the father's asse and the son is not absolutely totally
in every possible sense asse, there's some sense in which he's from the father,
he's begotten from the Father eternally, then he doesn't have the same nature
because there's no And this relates to a lot of the people in our field
because we've had to, you know, deal with a lot of Muslim argumentation,
and you know, me in premise is very close to a lot of
the Muslim argumentation. One thing I would like to point out about this notion
of the Father as source. Another reason this matters is that you eventually get
a different order of theologia, order of theology in the West, which I
really liked the way that you went into the fourth council of concept the noble
that the Roman Catholics accept, and that's one of the first Creedle uses of
that phrase, the one God in three persons. That's an Augustinian shift that
we actually see. And I just wanted to read one quote really quick,
which is people forget this, not you, but people forget that in the
Triads, saying Garia. Pallemist makes a really good point in the Third Triad,
section twelve, where he says that when God spoke to Moses, he
did not say I am Essence. He said I am the one, or
he who is so I am he is. The argument here meaning that the
reason that it's really important to begin our Trinitarian theology with the person of the
Father is that, as I think mayand Or effectively argues this as well as
Latsky does, this makes the starting point of reality and of the trinity hypostatic
personal. It's not beginning with the common Essence, which then tends to lead
over into this modalistic type of view. So could you comment on that as
to why why that is so important to guard this soul source as the person
of the Father, not just the common essence as the unit the principle of
unity. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really right. And there's you
know, there's this whole Once upon a time people made a bigger distinction between
like Greek and Latin views, and in more recent scholarship people have said,
well, that's kind of an exaggeration. There's really more, you know,
they're they're kind of closer. But I do, I do think that at
a at a sort of deeper level, there really is this. There really
is a difference. So like any any Roman Catholic theologian who actually knows their
theology is gonna say, yeah, we believe in the monarchy of the Father,
right like they're they're gonna, I mean, they're gonna say that like
they and it is I mean, it's official, you know, defeating The
Vatican Clarification admits all of this too, but it does admit at a certain
point in the document, but these two views are still intention Yeah. Yeah,
So I mean any any Catholic is going to say like that, yeah,
the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit like
eternally proceeds from the Father. They're going to say in the Son. But
point being, they're gonna say, yeah, the Father is like the ultimate
source and YadA, YadA. But the thing about it is like if you
if you look at kind of like a Quinas for example, like his overall
sort of system, it's like it's it's true that the Father is unbegotten and
doesn't proceed, and it's true that the Sun is begotten and the Spirit proceeds
and they're from the Father. But like, at a deeper sort of level,
the way he thinks about things really does start with the divine nature and
this like utter simplicity of the divine nature, and then he's because of that
he g ends up with this issue where like, well, if the divine
nature is so simple, like how do you get to hypostheses like how do
you how do you even get a trinity? And it's it's only it's only
when you have these asymmetric relations that can't like even even a relation that you
know if it's a if it's the sort of relation that like you could bear
to yourself, like the liking relation, like I could like myself or not.
Like you know, if there's something like that that you could bear to
yourself, then that's you don't get a trinity out of that, Like that's
not good enough, right, It's only if there's these relations like being a
father where you can't possibly be a father to yourself. Like so that sort
of prize the divine nature into two hypostases of the one nature or something.
And so then because he's thinking that way, like he's kind of starting with
the divine nature and thinking of it is so simple that then he needs the
filioqu way because you've got to have You've got to so you've got you know,
begetting and spirating a sort of pry apart the Father from the Son and
spirit. But you've got to have something to kind of yank apart the son
and the spirit. So you've got to have a relation in there too,
and that that all comes from. So even though you get this result,
Okay, yeah, the Father you know, begets the son and spirits the
spirit and it's the same. But but the way of thinking about it is
really that you're you're the most fundamental thing in some sense really is the divine
nature, and then it's just you pry these hypostas sees a part, you
know, with with these relations. So that's a very different way really of
thinking about the Trinity than to start with the Father and you say, oky,
we the most fundamental thing that we start with isn't the divine nature.
It's we start with the idea of the person of the Father. And every
hyposthesis has to have a nature, has to be a kind of some kind
of thing and has a hypostatic property, right, some quality that makes that
thing an individual thing. Right, So we start with father, and we've
got automatically a divine nature and the father's hypostatic property fatherhood. And because he's
a father, because that's his hypostatic property, then you get a son off
of that right. So it's not like you start with the divine nature and
then try to yank aparts. Yeah, we don't have to invent relations of
opposition and this kind of weird stuff which would relate to a diyad. There's
no opposition diad a as a opposition is for a diad. And then also
this you have the ability with hypeset of properties to pick out what's particular to
the person and then keeping that balance by whatever else you predicate of God or
the triad in this case is common to all three. And that way you
don't start getting powers or properties that two have that one lacks. And that's
where I think it starts to get into trouble, because even if you were
to posit, say this the becos argument or what some of the Roman Catholics
argue that, well, but what if the sun could be like a secondary
cause underneath the primordial cause of the Father. The problem is that it's not.
It's still granting a subordination in the Holy Spirit, because Holy Spirit doesn't
have even the secondary causal power. He doesn't have that medium power. So
there's still a lack there. And I think, as you've effectively argued in
your lecture, you know, going from Saint Photios, if you're starting to
give powers to two, you might as well give it to all three.
It would make more sense to have cause as something that all three share rather
than two. Yeah, I've actually I've been talking a lot with my friend
Scott Williams, so i'll give a shout out to him. Lately, that.
So he's he does a lot of like Western medieval scholastic philosophy and theology.
He did did his dissertation on Henry of Ghent, and a lot of
it has to do with the Trinity anyway. So he's, yeah, he's
helps me kind of understand the Western view about the philioquay better. I'm still
not sure that it's coherent or not, but one thing was. But I
do, I mean, I do kind of understand a little bit anyway,
a little bit better. And I and I he's he I think some of
the some of the arguments from Orthodox sources like Saint Photius for example, when
you think about it, he's writing very early on before the Plastics really kind
of dig in all this stuff. So there's a lot of his arguments that
that maybe don't apply to some of the later Scholastics because they're you know,
they're sort of formulating their view in response to to him. But but I
do still ultimately I think, I guess, I guess at this point,
I would say, I think, like I have to do more thinking about
it, like maybe there's some maybe there's a way to make it coherent sort
of, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to actually be the Cappadocian's view,
Like if you do come up with the metaphysics, that kind of makes
it all made. So even if you have theoretically median cause argument, first
of all, wouldn't be what's actually in Florence, right, because Florence said,
yeah, that that's the big thing is I yeah that with Florence.
I just I feel like Florence like just took it's just the weirdest. I
just feel like it's such a weird council because it's it's just like any anything
that Orthodox might have been able to say, like well that could maybe be
okay, they're just like we explicitly mean precisely the worst possible interpretation. Yeah,
it explicitly says eternal hypostatic origin from the father and the son as from
a single principle. And that's the that's the problem. So even if there
was some sort of Beco's argumentation about media laws, I don't I don't believe
that. I think that the I think the Orthodox response to that with the
notion of you know, existing with and necessarily existing with doesn't necessitate that you're
the cause, right, So I can relate to something in different ways without
the relations being identical. Right, So I might share a common nature with
other human beings, and I share a common nature with my father, but
my father relates to me in a unique way as my only source. But
because I share the nature of you know, my brother, we have that
same nature, we exist with that same nature, that doesn't make my brother
the cause of my nature. So likewise, even if the Son exists at
the same time as or you know, co eternal with the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Spirit has its existence and is reposed in the son, none of
those phrases equate to the Spirit taking on or because he proceeds through the son.
It doesn't follow that the Son is therefore the cause of his hyposthetic existence,
precisely because it seems like the Stress and the Cappadocians on the Father as
the soul source and cause. And if he's a soul source and cause,
then if there's a perfect son generated, then by necessity, the procession of
the Spirit must also be perfect from the Father. In other words, it
can't be you know, this is a photiin argument. It can't be imperfect
in the sense that, well, the Father does this part of it and
then the Son does this other part of it. Right, it has to
be whole and entire. If it's hole and entire with the sun, then
it follows that its whole and entire and perfect for the spirit. Do you
think that argument still holds? Well, yeah, so, I mean I
think yeah, Like Photius's argument is kind of ironically like, this would be
a problem for divine simplicity, right if the Father causes like part of the
spirit and the Son causes a different part, Like, well, then he's
not simple anymore. What I figured out, I mean, I didn't get
this before, but what Scott William's kind of helping realizes that the way I
guess that they're thinking about this double procession thing is sort of like what what
we would talk about with the inseparable operations odd extra so like the way the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all sort of jointly cause cause the creation
and they count as one creator, a single creator because and that's another sort
of part of the paper, and my dissertation is like if they have a
single energy, then they that's one creator. They just all three sort of
count as a one, the one creator. And basically they're applying that same
sort of thinking to the procession of the Holy Spirit right Father and side.
But they're collapsing the the movement of the spirit in terms of energetic manifestation,
they're collapsing that into hypostetic origin. And Palomas makes a really strong case that
you know, you have to have three different plane. He goes the three
planes, if I remember correctly, says there's the plane of hyposthetic origin,
which is very strict in that you know, the Father is the sole source,
the son begotten spirit proceeding. And then the next plane of existence is
the procession of the Spirit and the energies. The Spirit proceeds from the Father
through the Son, and thus the energies take the same mood that they have
the same movement from the Father through the Son and the Spirit. And I
think the Capitians say returns to the Father, which I've never understood exactly what
that means, but I think it's I was going to ask you if you
get e lucidate that, but before I ask you about that, you know
that. And then the third plane that Palomos talks about is the economy,
so that those have to all three be distinguished. In his line of argumentation,
what do you do you think that's still kind of the correct model for
this. This what we would say in regard to lions in Florence. Yeah,
I think that last thing you mentioned is is a good point too,
that a lot a lot of times in the West, like Catholics and Protestants
both will do this. They'll they'll think, like, yeah, economic activity
of the Trinity is all kind of like a reflection of something going on in
the imminent Trinity, meaning in other words, meaning you know if the yeah,
if the sun sends the Holy Spirit breathes the spirit into people or something
like into the disciples, then that means that, you know, in eternity
there's this thing going on where, uh, there's this relation between the sun,
like everything that happens in time, in creation, in the economy like
reflects something that's that's true about God just sort of in eternity abstracted a way
of creation. And I have no idea of why they think that, but
it's just kind of like the premise, and it never seems like it's very
well argued. I mean, sometimes people will say something like well, otherwise
we wouldn't have any way, you know, to know anything about the Trinity,
and it seems like well revelation like right, Like like Jesus says the
Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, like, that seems like a way you
could have knowledge that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Like, So
I I always find that really unconvincing, but it's something that's that they they
often assume, and so I think it is important to point out that that's
there's a distinction between what happens in time versus what happens in eternity. Well,
but he also stresses the distinction between what happens at the level of hypostetic
origin versus energetic manifestation and the movement of the energies. Right, So what
do you think about that? I think it's a pretty good interpretation of the
of the of the Father's because well, what really the way I would describe
it, like with as far as Gregory Nissa, who because I was going
to ask you about the Gregor because yeah, they're basically even at Florence,
they're basically arguing, well, what were the Kalpadocian saying, Yeah, here's
my my view on the on Gregor Nissa, like from a just kind of
scholarly perspective, there. Here's here's kind of the tension. Right. When
Gregor Nissa talks about the hypostatic properties explicitly, he says they are simple and
unsharable. So he says that the usia, the divine nature or essence is
shared all this, persons have the divine nature equally. The hypostatic properties are
simple and unsharable. So and that's important, right. So on the one
hand, it's they're unsharable, right, so if the father has fatherhood,
the son doesn't, the Holy Spirit doesn't. If the Spirit proceeds, than
the father and the son don't proceed. But also he I mean, he
says they're simple, so you can't say so if you said they weren't simple,
they're the idiomata are just unsharable. You. Someone might make the argument,
well, the father's hypostatic property is a conjunction of you know, begetting
but being unbegotten and spirating and not being spiated, right, and all of
that together is what distinguishes him. And then the son, you know,
is begotten, but he spirates the spirit too and is not spirit. And
then the spirit is spirated but doesn't begat and is you know, so you
might say, oh, well, that's fine, they can kind of share
some things, but it's like the whole, the whole big package is unsharable.
But that's not what Gregoranisa says. He says they're simple and unsharable.
So in his explicit statement, it's not like you could chop up the Father's
idioma into parts and like share a part of it, just as long as
you don't share all of it. It's just it's simple and unshareable. So
just and then elsewhere, he says, when it you know, when it
comes to the USA, they've got the whole lusia in common. But he
says, when we're talking about the idiomata, the hypostatic properties, he says
they have the persons of the Trinity have nothing in common with respect to the
idiomata, nothing in common, right, So that would yeah, I mean
there's this pretty strong language for you know, for anybody who try to deny
the Father as the sole cause and say, well, but there's also this
other kind of co cause. So that's so that's one sort of piece to
the puzzle, is that when if you're looking at explicit statements about his metaphysics,
it looks like there's just no way to reconcile that with the filia anyway,
not any straightforward obvious way to reconcile it with the Filioqui. The thing
that makes it puzzling and weird is that then he also will say things.
He'll give metaphors and analogies and things that that do look sort of like the
filioque or like some kind of Becos style thing or whatever. So like he'll
give the analogy, he gives the analogy of like you've got a torch that's
just always been burning or whatever, and then you've got a second torch that's
lit off the first, and then a third torch that's lit off the second.
So that looks like, well that then that looks like, okay,
the father begets the son, and then it's really the spirit proceeds from the
son really immediately, but you know, you could sort of look at it
as ultimately from the father or something like that, and that so then that
looks like, well, then it's kind of you know, is that a
what is that from the father through the son or what's going on with that?
And so that's what makes it kind of difficult, I think to interpret
him is because it's he's got explicit statements that just look like that's not it's
not going to work with the phillioqui, and then he's got analogies that are
kind of like, yeah, well how does that fit? So I think
really the interpretation about energetic processions like that's a pretty good way to solve them
that because otherwise you're just kind of left looking at it like what is this?
How does this work? Well, this is important because i'd like to
get your comment on this, not just with Nissa, but the other cavitations
as well. Is that a lot of times when Roman Catholics approach the issue,
they're really just kind of going through country Unomius looking for a few quote
minds or a few things that support the position via analogies. But the problem
is that when you read the totality of the works, you realize, for
example, in sant greg and Nissa's against Eunomius, he's also pointing out that
the Son cannot be a work of the father because he shares the same energies
as the father. So, in other words, the essence energy distinction is
here, and the essence energy distinction is fundamental, again, not just to
Nissa's counture Unomius, but also to Basil's country Unomius as well as Basils on
the Holy Spirit. The operations of the energies are constantly used as a kind
of argument. Basil says, for example, if the Holy Spirit has all
the same energies as the Father and the Son, then he must therefore share
the same nature because energy is the manifestation or proceeds from the nature that has
that energy. So, in other words, essence energy stinction is so fundamental
to Cappadocians, all three of them, that it's really it's not only a
question of are there a few quotes in Nissa that might sound like philioque,
it's that the theology as a whole is bound up with not just not just
hyposthetic properties and Father has soul found, but also essence energy distinction. Mm
hmmm, No, I totally agree. You know, It's it's one of
these things where I really do, I really do feel like that there there
are Roman athleics that interpret they want to interpret basal and and nisas like not
making the essence synergy distinction, and I just think like that's I mean,
like they feel like maybe they have to to make it work with their theology
or whatever. But I just think it's it's very clear, like it's it
seems very clear, like and the reason if you put it into the context
of the argument again, just think about this. Unomiasay's argument is like premise
one absolute divine simplicity, Like everything we predicate about God is just a predication
of God's essence. There's no energies, there's no access, there's no it
just all has to be different ways of getting at the divine nature, which
is frankly at least as I understand a Quinas like sounds alone. Yeah,
when it comes to the attributes, Yeah, so Aquinas says there is a
real distinction in the strongest possible terms in his theology between the persons. There's
not a real distinction between the attributes compared amongst themselves. And he also says
there's not a real distinction between nature and person. So that would fall into
that's the big problem. Yeah, I've never I mean, I'm I don't
like wele. I don't want to accuse someone like Thomas Aquinas of just being
an idiot and crazy or something. But I'm sure there's I'm sure there's a
way to make him to that. Well, to me, it seems like
there is competing things going on, Like there's the there's this Aquinas that is
saying correct things, you know over here, but then there's another Aquinas that's
kind of like, but we've also got to make august Augustinian ideas work.
I've also got to you know, make these principles of you know, actually
it's it's Neil Platonic ideas of simplicity. I've got to somehow make that work
with you know, this these other things that and so that's where that's my
take on it is that there's basically different Aquinases. Yeah, well that's that
may be. Oh I was gonna I was saying, so with Unomius's argument,
right, it's kind of absolute divine simplicity is premise one. Premise two.
We all acknowledge that the father's unbegotten conclusion, unbegottenness is the divine nature,
damn. So and the the you know, I mean like Aquinas knows,
I mean maybe they have, maybe they have good responses or whatever,
but but the response that you get from the Capit Oceans, from Basil is
Basil just ridicules the idea that everything we predicate about He just says that that's
false from the outset, right, I mean that's was two thirty four or
whatever that well, and and he argues the distinction don't entail composition or division.
And they actually argue that if they did, then you you know,
you couldn't predicate anything. I mean, they actually make a lot of the
Polemit arguments before Palomas. That's why Palmus refers back usually a lot of Cappadocian
argumentation, and Basil even I mean, he's pretty explicitly he says, you
know, there's a difference between the essence and the energies. And he says,
you know, you can't say that God's mercy and justice and his for
knowledge and his active creation, all these things. He says, you know,
are all these just all names for the same thing, Like that's crazy,
and they're all really just the divine nature. And he says, no,
they're all distinct from the divine nature. They're distinct from each other.
There's so his response to the Unomian argument is to give the essence energy distinction,
right. I don't know if you've ever seen have you seen Aquinas's response
to John Damascus on the on the essencenarianstinction, the one where he just says
he's wrong. Well, and he says, E sides mine and I yeah,
he says, he says, uh, we can't posit a distinction between
operation and in essence because number one, that would mean that God has accidents.
And then he says, and my monodes has said so it's basically I'll
just pull out mimaides to So in other words, he's citing Mima and eighties
to reject John Damascus. So I like to pull that one out. But
yeah, yeah, I'll have to look that up. I'll show you.
I've got it over here on my shelf. I'll send you the screenshot.
I was gonna mention because this is this is important about the the filioquid stuff
too. Is when Gregory Nazianzen is responding to Eunomius, So Eunomius asks this
question, is is begetting? So the Campinusians will always do this where they
say, look, natures are individuated by the causal powers so that they bestow
on their bearers, right or the activities that that are associate of the energies
what we call energies. So yeah, if two things have all the same
energies, then that's they're the same nature. Right, So if the fathers,
so the Capitocians are always like, look, here's this kind of challenge,
like, give show us something in the scriptures that's attributed to the father
the father does, but the son doesn't. Or the spirit does, but
the father does, you know something that one does but the omens don't.
And the Unomians did respond, and they said, yeah, begetting, right,
like the father begets the son. That's and so what they were assuming
is that what they what they say is, look, either that's either begetting
either that's God's nature, in which case the father and son just automatically don't
have the same nature because the son doesn't beget, or you know, it's
an energy that the father has the son doesn't, right, or you know
which either way you're kind of you know, wrong way. And Gregory Nazianzen's
response is that he says it's neither. He says that begetting is neither the
divine nature nor an energy. He says it's just a relation. That's just
the really Well, and another point here that the whole argument for the philioque
assumes that we should take begetting and spirating to be energies, to be operations
of the divine. But that's how you get the joint like like spirating as
one principle is you have this argument that, well, the power to spirate
is in the divine nature if that's one of the energies of the divine nature,
right, And so the father and the son both get that power,
and so they both spirate the spirit in just the same way, like just
the same way that that all three persons have the power of creating and foreknoing.
Right, it's equated as a as an energy or a power. And
by the way, I recall the Florence quote is from On the Trinity,
right of Augustine, so that Florence is actually citing one of the sections in
On the Trinity where Augustine is making this argument. So we know in what
sense it's met. It meant, it's meant in the same sense as what
Augustine said, and Augustine collapses, like you said, action into essence in
just this way. Yeah, it's always always been puzzled by that because,
yeah, like the capit Ocean's response to Eunomius is just to reject the kind
of extreme view of divine simplicity that Eunomius has and Augustine. Yeah, Augustine
goes along with Eunomius in all all sorts of ways, and I've never I
don't know if he just kind of didn't because he didn't have access. Well,
I read it. I read a really good paper by a Greek theologian
who argued that Eunomius's arguments or really closely borrowed from Plotinus. So given the
fact that I think even some of on the Trinity kind of even just borrows
directly out of the Neods, yeah yeah, yeah, that might yeah,
it might be that it might just be that he was convinced that that was
that was right. But yeah, I mean, I guess I get what
Augustine's wants to do is to kind of take on board as much as he
kind of as he can from neo Platonism, and so he's going to agree
with you know me is about a lot of stuff and try to sort of
still make it work. But yeah, but so this is what I mean
that that kind of goes back to this point that I feel like, even
if you could, if you can make the philioque makes sense in some way,
Like, I just think you're almost certainly going to be doing it by
not having the capit ocean's view. Well, and let's keep in mind,
as you've argued that the cap of ocean view is really what is codified at
Constantinople one. Correct. Yeah, I mean right, so if you think
about it, yeah, I mean Augustine wasn't at the Second Acumenical Council.
He was, I guess he was going. He was on his way when
he died, but yeah, and and when so yeah, I mean Augustine
was like never at an Acumenical council to talk about his views. Everyone.
I think pretty much any scholar will acknowledge that, like Gregory of Nissa is
really kind of the the mastermind behind the Second Acumenical Council really ultimately, because
Basil had already died just a few years before. Gregor Nazianzen was the president
for a while and then he quit and go, and I think and there's
I mean, there's evidence to show that Nazianzen was kind of disappointed with it,
you know, he I mean specifically that just that you know, the
Creed still doesn't say explicitly that the Holy Spirit is divine it just they kind
of left that a little nebulous, which I think that was a big thing
for him and he I think it was kind of like we could do better
than that. But anyway, Gregor, and this was there the whole time,
was there's a lot of evidence to show that, like his theology was
very very much influential at that well, is it accurate to say all three
of the Competocians had a lot of influence and Nissa was really sort of the
key there? Yeah? Yeah, I mean what really, I mean,
Basil while he was alive, was really kind of the main character in a
sense and all that, and after he passed away, it was sort of
like the mantle fell to Gregory Nissa in a way, and Gregory sort of
felt like, I think he just kind of wanted to defend his brother's theology
and kind of clean up, you know, finish things that he hadn't finished
and so on and so forth. But anyway, there's there's a lot like
after after the council was over, the edict that Emperor Theodosius issues, like
right after the council, like Gregory of Nissa by name is is like Roman
law basically sat at that point said, for you to count as a Catholic
church, you have to be in communion with Gregory of Nissa, Like that's
that's one of the things that so they what they did, they listed people
like the actual individual bishops in each location in different regions, where like if
there's a question about whether this person's theology is sound or not, this person
is who you'll go to. And that actually happened, like Gregor Vanissa was
called on to interview someone, you know about their their trinitarian beliefs. Oh
interesting, Yeah, I mean that's that's really strong because a lot of Roman
Catholics bring that up and they said, where you getting the side that Constantinople
one is, you know this Cappadocian council. And my understanding was that it
wasn't even controversial in terms of the scholarship. Yeah, now let's see you
mentioned by the way, I mean, it's mention this to you to like
as far as like, let's talk about Western Fathers a little bit, because
like Saint Jerome before you go to the Western Father's one question, because I
do want to ask you about Jerome. You did make a good point about
this before you move on from the Florence issue. You had mentioned the scholar
that you were under the Jesuit Father Daily, and you mentioned that, you
know, his admission about his admission about Florence. I think it was very
telling. Yeah, so I when I was in graduate school, everybody told
me when they found out I was Orthodox, like, oh, do you
know Father Daily, You should go talk for it. And I did.
I went, I went and talked to I sat in on a lot of
his Patristics classes. Wonderful human being and a very eminent Patristic scholar. He
was nice enough to be the co director of my dissertation. And yeah,
so he he also was a big person in the I forget now what it's
the anyway, the Orthodox Catholic Ecumenical Dialogue. I forget what the exact name
of the organization is, but anyway, the organization where Orthodox and Catholic kind
of come together and talk about you know, communion and so forth. And
that was another one of his big specialties was actually like Orthodox theology and stuff.
Actually he was callistos Ware was his his dissertation advisor so at Oxford,
so he knows something about Orthodox he is. But anyway, Yeah, one
time we were having lunch and talking about that and got on the top of
the Philioquay and talking about greg Revanissa and like, what was this from the
Father through the son or how is this what's going on? And anyway it
came. It came up the thing about the double procession at Florence, and
he told me his his view was that for the Orthodox and Catholic Church to
come into commune and everything, he said, I think we just have to
drop Florence. And I was like, how do you do that? I
mean, that's an ecumenical council and he just said he said his view was
that the Catholic Church just needs to say that every council they've had since the
Great Schism only counts as a local council and doesn't count as an ecumenical council.
And then that way they could they could say that the the way they
defined the Phillyoquay specifically is double procession, like in Florence, they could say,
well, that was just a local council, so it's not infallible.
It's just kind of our thing and it's not really you know, necessary for
for everyone or whatever, which I yeah, I was kind of I was
kind of shocked when he said that. I was just kind of like,
I mean, that would kind of undo the last thousand That wouldn't undo the
last thousand years. I mean basically Vatican one would be false as well,
because you know, yeah, I mean that's the thing to be. I
mean, it's like, yeah, papal infallibility then would would go out the
right. I mean, not that not that you couldn't sort of bring it
back or something. I mean, Vatican one would be not an acumenical council.
So then yeah, I would bring into question like papal infallibility. And
I just thought, I mean, I was really I was pretty surprised when
I when I heard him say that. But I mean I think he's probably
right that that's I mean, yeah, I mean that the real issue is
the dogmatic statement you know in Florence about double eternal hypesec. That's the key
point here. But yeah, now you were before we go Jerome that I
thought of one other thing, which is that Another issue that comes up in
Aquinas is his statement, uh persona at rolati a person is relation, and
Orthodox theologians have critiqued that for a long time as well, because a relation
is a predicate and a person is a subject, So you can't say that
a relation is the agent or the subject. They might be markers or idio
model, but they're not. They're also not strictly identical. And so that's
again another one of those collapsing issues that we see, I think in Western
simplicity models. Yeah, I feel like that's another one of these areas where
I hesitate to. I don't like to. I don't like to think that
someone like Aquinas is just like an idiot. I got I got this.
Well, I'm not saying he's an idiot. I'm saying that's all. That's
a Losky critique because he studied under digital so and so Losky would be critiquing
presumably a tangel Son in that regard. He's yeah, he's interesting. But
I any so I try to I like to want to try to come up
with a charitable interpretation of someone. So a lot of times I just look
at some of these things and I think, I have no idea what this
guy means, because I mean, you take in a straightforward way, it's
like, well, obviously persons are not relations. That doesn't even make any
sense, And even like in terms of kind of scholastic thought, like a
subpositum as they would call it, Like it is not a relat to you,
Like, that's just that doesn't really doesn't really make much, says,
But I mean, one way maybe to interpret it is like I mean,
like Greg Revanissa, for example, is a bundle theorist, so he kind
of thinks of individuals as just collections of properties, which is a total you
know, just I went over this just the other day in my metaphysics class.
Is totally you know, reasonable view. Like some people think that there's
such thing as matter that comes in and individuates things, and some people don't.
Maybe maybe it's just like bundle theory, but there's not much of a
bundle. It's just the relation or something. It still seems kind of weird
to say that a person just is the relation, but well but it means
remember but remember person is also not really distinct from nature. So the distinction
between nature and person that if I recall it, says that Aquinas says,
that's conceptual. He says, the distinction between between the divine person, like
between father and the son is a real distinction, but between the father and
the divine nature is purely conceptual and not really so so we see the so
then the problems are arising again with simplicity. It's like, well, but
then then how would you distinguish the persons? Well, I'm going to introduce
relations, relations of oppositions, relation of origin, a lot of different attempts
at trying to distinguish. Yeah, I do, I mean, I don't
know. So that's that's the sort of thing. Like I feel like I'd
have to sit down and really study Aquinas and see, like, what's can
I come up with some way to make it? Certainly on a straightforward reading,
it does seem pretty hard to hard to reconcile it all. And I
guess one thing I would say is it's you know, there's also that you
know that what Aquinas himself actually meant is one question, And then like how
do Pete Thomas today interpret him? And what kind of you know, what
does it sound like? And how do people make sense up today? Is
kind of another, because there's a lot there are I mean, there there
are Thomas out there who are just like, yeah, the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit are all identical to the Divine Essence, but not to each
other. Yeah, that's kind of a contradiction moving along, and I like,
that's just you know, and it's like, I mean, I hope
that that's not really a Quinas's view because that's just dumb like that. And
I don't I don't know, so anyway, I hesitate to attribute those those
things to Aquinas without really digging through him. But it's but it's like,
I mean, anyway, that interpretation of Aquinas or that kind of version of
Tomism just seems like that's not viable, Like that doesn't make any sense.
So well, I mean it's another us. It kind of relates to the
you know again, like the issue of the Philioquay, Like I mean,
Maximus the Confessor was okay with the Phillyoquay interpreted in a certain way, you
know, but then you get like, at Florence, just let's interpret it
specifically in the way that won't Well. Yeah, and it's even earlier because
it's at twelve seventy four that they first used the Augustinian phrase of the double
eternal hypesite procession. So so I think, yeah, we can grant a
lot of flexibility at least until Florence, because that's really the first dogmatic statement
of the double eternal type. I mean Lions Lions is the first, and
then you get the Palamite response councils and Gregory of Cyprus and all that,
Blackerne and all that, and then you get Florence. But for those that
are curious, the Crisis in Byzantium book by Papa Doccus I think is really
good on that. If if you're in the audience and you want to read
more on that in terms of the issue of the Philly Okay, but maybe
let's move on then to what were you you wanted to say about Saint Jerome
and these these topics briefly about the Western Fathers. I mean sometimes people paint
this is like an East versus West thing, but like like Saint Jerome was
at the Second tech Umenical Council, and Gregory of Nissa was like, while
the council was going on, he was working on a draft of country Unomius
and was like reading drafts of what he was writing to Saint Jerome and Saint
Gregory and Aziens, and like Saint Jerome was all on board with what Gregory
Nissa was saying. And even you know in Jerome has a what whatever it's
called Lives of Illustrious Men or whatever the title is, and talks about Gregory
Nissa and approvingly. And I mean Jerome didn't write a whole lot about the
Trinity directly, but anyway, and it seems like he approved of the Cappitocian
theogy and he was I mean, he was at the council Saint Ambrose.
I mean, you know, famously, Saint Jerome like criticized Saint Ambrose because
he's just basically said, he just plagiarized everything from Saint Basil like, which
is kind of true. Like what I mean, when Saint Ambrose was made
a bishop, like he just kind of gave himself a crash course in theology,
like and a lot of it was just basil like. And if you
read Ambrose, like, his theology is just basically Saint Besis. Yeah,
that's that's a great point. Yeahs it really is Augustine. And I mean,
I don't I I used to be more extreme on this, like I
kind of over time, I always I've kind of grown more to think,
like you, there's less difference between Augustine and other church fathers, and there's
less difference between East and West. So but but I still do just think
like that, there's there's a handful of really key issues where like Augustine is
just different from Ambrose and everybody that that went before him, Like you know,
he the thing with divine simplicity and like the essence energy distinction. And
by the way, this is Ambrose says this. At one point he says
that the name so just like Greg Renissa says, he says, the word
God, Ambrose says, is not a name for the nature, but it's
a name for the operations, which is the latter term for energies, the
same thing. Peter Lombard, who's the audience, like in the mid kind
of later well, I guess not super late medieval time, but anyway,
later on in the classic period. Lombard puts together the Sentences, which is
just kind of a collection is sort of an medieval quote mine, I guess
from the from the fathers about all these different topics. Right, he quotes
Ambrose. So Lombard quotes Ambrose as saying the name the word God is a
name for the divine nature. So he leaves he just leaves leaves out the
word not. And that's rele of it because as I'm sure, you know.
The fourth later and Council. It accepts the Lombardian definition of what divine
unity is, and that is a further strong, much stronger statement than the
eight sixty nine. The one God is the three persons state, Yeah,
because the one God is the three persons or the three persons of the one
God. That's something that you can totally make sense out of. That's part
of what I do in this in this book chapter God in his word and
his Spirit are one God. Sometimes people look at that and they think,
well, that's kind of crazy, in contradictory or paradoxical. What does that
mean, or or they get fixated, like if people have listened to my
podcast about the monarchia, then they think, oh, you can only use
the word God for the Father and you can't ever say that the Son is
God or the Trinity is God or something. But what I do is I
just say, I mean, there is this sense in which the persons of
the Trinity are one God in the sense of the energies. Right, So
in the same way we'd say they're one creator because there's one act of creation
that they all perform. There's there one savior because there's just one act of
salvation that they all kind of perform, and whatever the activity is that the
word God expresses, they all do that as one and so they're one God.
So you certainly can say this person's of the trinity are one God in
the predicative sense that using the word God as a predicate, right, yes,
and so then it makes total sense for Jonavan Masters to say God meaning
the Father and his Son and his Spirit are one God, because it's God
in the sense of the Father or the sense of the source, right,
and his son and his Spirit are jointly one agent. Right, they jointly
do this activity. So it's kind of using the word God in the sense
of the monarchia and then using the word God in the sense of the energy
common energy. Yeah. Yeah, John of Masks says there's one God because
there's one energy, because there's one God acting. But by that he means
not to deny that the triadic reality, but the way that the any action
of God happens is triaddic. So the one action is uniquely manifested by the
Father, Son and Spirit in their respective roles. So it's still one God
acting and one energy. But that also, by the way for people who
will clip this and obsess over it. Does not mean that there's only one
divine energy. There are many divine energies, as the Pino thesis has just
gone into great detail to show. So let's see. Uh. I noticed
in your paper here so sort of skimming looking at it, that you you
did go into the the the recent you know, scholarship from Siegel and other
people about how do we deal with the Theophanes. You want to comment on
that, Yeah, I do, And all all if my interlocutors are shocked,
shocked that I would I would talk about the Theophanes and say it's important,
It's totally unimportant, there's nothing to see here. Yeah, what I
what I do is I say there's three I just give three desiderata that you
want a model of the Trinity or doctrine of the Trinity to do. I
say, you want, you know, I want it to not be tritheistic,
which is the big objection. And you want to address this thing from
Dale Tuggy about why God equals the Father and how does that fit together,
which we've kind of talked about. And what I say is that a lot
of the scholarship just focuses on defending the doctrine of the Trinity against objections,
and it makes it look like like there's no real motivation for the doctrine of
the Trinity. It's just like here it is, it's part of our tradition,
and we just want to defend it against and and it kind of starts
to feel like, oh, well, then if you can't defend it against
these objections, like unitarianism would just be the default, right, And I
say that's not really true, because there's there are reasons that motive it,
right. And the other thing I say is that my my issue with a
lot of kind of modern these like models of the Trinity that people come up
with is I say, a lot of times they're so divorced from the original
motivations behind the doctrine to Trinity that they just kind of are unrecognizable because they've
they've kind of forgotten what the reasons were for the doctrine and they come up
with these models that don't really fit. So I talked about the Theophany problem,
which is just very simply, you know, God says no one can
see Me and live, but then tons of people see God and live in
the old Testament, So how do you make sense out of that? And
it turns out that that was that was a big issue in late Second Temple
Jewish thought and in like Jewish apocalyptic literature. Yeah, I had. I
had to read some of that for the debate with Daniel Hikikachew, so I
went into a lot of those texts. Yeah, and it's really fascinating too.
I mean there's a lot of you can see it even when people aren't
like explicitly addressing it. There are all these texts like the Apocalypse of Abraham
and these sorts of things where like it doesn't explicitly bring it up, but
it's clear that this text is like giving you a picture of God that's designed
to make sense out of that issue. Right, So, like the Apocalypse
of Abraham, for example, you never see God, like you hear his
voice a few times. But then there's this angel named Yahoel that's kind of
like a you know, combination of Yahweh and Elohem Yahoel, and that angel
is who actually appears to Abraham and speaks with him and so forth. And
so it's like, oh, okay, well then that's what's really happening,
is Abraham never did actually see God. He saw this angel that kind of
has God's name or something, and you kind of find out later that the
angels a big deal. It's not totally clear if he's like created or not,
but anyway, but there's all these kind of texts like this all through
the targums, which are these like Aramaic supposed to be like translations of the
Hebrew Bible from Hebrew into Aramic, but a lot of times the translational kind
of veer into commentary, like it'll kind of go into explaining things and so
forth. And in the targams you have this same look almost every time there's
something anthropomorphia, anytime God is seen, anytime God changes or does anything,
or there's any kind of anthropomorphism at all, it's like instead of God,
it's the memra, which is just Aramic for the word like the logos.
Right, So anyway, that's it's a big issue in late Second Temple Dudaism,
and I there's other and it's what motivated one of the things that motivates
this what people call the two powers theology. So there's two powers in have
and that gets talked about later in the twel Mood and stuff, and what
I point out is just and a lot of scholar I mean, this isn't
like original to me. A lot of scholars have said, yeah, it
looks like what's what's happened was with Christianities. Christianity was just another one of
these two powers views. There were a lot of different schools of thought in
Judaism at the time. A lot of people today we think about Judaism as
a more monolithic sort of thing because it's basically like kind of just the Pharisees
that survived the destruction of Jerusalem and everything. But I mean, if you
think about it, like even in the New Testament, we get you know,
we get told like the Sadducees didn't believe in a resurrection, I didn't
believe in angels. They thought like, if you there's no afterlife at all.
So if you I mean they literally said, like, if you can
sin and you don't get punished for it or whatever, you were a gainer.
That's what you're like, if you die, you'd never great because there's
no afterlife. And they didn't accept any of the profits, like just the
Torah. So like if that's a very radically different kind of Judaism right,
and the scenes were even right and still so there's a lot going on in
Second Temple Judaism. And a lot of people today would just say, yeah,
it looks like Christianity was one of these two powers kind of versions of
Judaism. I think Boyarn says that Christianity, early Christianity, represents a conservative
form of that early Judaism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's another
thing is a lot of people have have argued that that maybe that is actually
the more traditional older view and the like strictly unitarian sort of yeah, he's
he thinks that's a summer thinks that's mamonidean. Oh well, well, that
that the strict codified view that I mean, not that there there weren't Unitarian
views prior to mam and eighties, but that that it becomes normal of as
a strict Unitarian thing is modified by mom. And that's a summer argument.
Okay, yeah, fair enough, because it's all over the tall mood these
this kind of discussion. Yeah, no, I know, they rejected.
There was a they had a they rejected. It was a rabbi Rabbi Akiva
speculator. One of them is speculated about multiple powers and then that he gets
rejected early on. Yeah, it's funny. You just reminded that's one of
the things that motivated me to well, and it kind of was behind me
converting to Orthodox later. But anyway, that's that's a whole other, whole
other issue. But but yeah, so there's a lot of scholarship to say,
okay, Christianity two powers in heaven version of Judaism and early Christians just
kind of identified Jesus as the second power. Messiah is the second power.
And then so that's where you get in there's where you get the Doctor of
the Trinity, right, because they thought Jesus is the Messiah and he's the
second power in heaven and and then and then you get questions, you know,
so later you get and actually Steve Father Stephen Deyong points this out in
the Religion of the Apostles that you know, you have versions of Judaism where
the second power is a created angel like Michael or you know, and then
you get versions of Metatron or something, Yeah, Metatron, who's explicitly a
creature. And then you get versions where it's a human like Enoch or something
that's like in kind of elevated to this divine status, and then you have
stuff like the memo in the Targets, which looks like, okay, that's
probably uncreated. So he just points out that that sort of gets reflected later
in Christianity with like arianism would be kind of like the Medatron or Michael's sort
of view, like Christ is a created angel. The adoptionism is like the
Enoch view, like Jesus is a man who's kind of elevated as and an
Orthodoxy is sort of like the memo of view that's like, you know,
it's he's uncreated, and I think that's probably right that you just you know
you you have I mean, Christianity just came out of Judaism, and and
it makes sense that people would be looking at these Jewish schools of thought and
kind of thinking, okay, where do we fit and whatever. And anyway,
so my my thing is like that's that's the historical origin of the doctum
of the Trinity traces back to two powers Jewish theology and this question about the
Theophanes, and so your model of the Trinity ought to have an answer to
this question, how is it that you can no one can see God?
But everybody sees it. So I go through kind of how the I mean,
basically, I just say the church Father's view is not I mean,
they they're all pretty clear. Like the person that was seen in the Theophanes
was Jesus Christ. All the second century apologists say that third century the capit
Ocians do, and it kind of goes goes on up well, and it
seems to be the way Jesus argues to the Pharisees in John five, and
it doesn't seem like the Pharisees really take issue with it. You know,
he says, no one sees the Father at any time, right, Yeah,
no one has ever seen the Father anything. And that's well, one
thing I do is I point out, like, okay, so unitarians,
I mean, of course have a what I call a father theophany theology,
right, so that the theophanies, the appearances of God in the Old Testament
have to be the Father for them, because there's not just no one else
that could write Jesus wasn't created yet, and the Holy Spirit's just another word
for the Father. So they have to have a father theophany of you.
Well, that is that because they hold on? Is that because they have
to do. They have to grapple with the fact that it's identified as autumn
worshiped or why why wouldn't they just say it's an angel, a created angel.
Well I was gonna say, you're right, they could just say it's
a created angel. Yeah, But but my issue with that, and I
talk about that in my response to to Tuggy my kind of challenges to him
is I say, so, like, yeah, you could say it's a
created angel. Well, let me put it this way. You could Sometimes
some unitarians will respond to this whole thing by saying, yeah, cool,
whatever, but that's not Jesus. Jesus is just created. But it's like,
well, if you have two divine persons, it's just not Jesus.
I mean, that's still they're still right, like if that's if that's try
theism or Dietheism for for Trinitarians, and it's still Dietheism is just not with
Jesus, and that's not who cares, right, So really, you mean
you'd have to say it's a created angel, so you you in other words,
you're just going really with old school areas right, that the the logos
is this creature or whatever, and I don't really have time in in the
within the word count that I that I have to go into like a full
criticism of arianism. But I but there's kind of two things I'd say about
that. Number one arianism. I mean, I hate people don't like to
hear this, but I mean, from a scholarly sort of perspective, like
arianism is not not like a nut job view, Like it's not just like
totally. I mean, there's a reason why it cropped up in Alexandria in
the fourth century and it took so long to work out, is like,
I mean, it's there's there are arguments for it. There's a lot of
ambiguity in some of the second century and third century writings and so forth.
So it's like, I mean, it's not it's not so nutty, but
it's also its way. I mean it's it's it's way far from where like
Dale Tuggy is, where Jesus is just a creature. Because for the Arians
like and think about this, I mean, arians were clear that like when
Yahweh shows up to Moses and says I am that I am, Like,
that's Jesus, right, I mean they would call him y'all. I mean,
you know me its even says like that he you know, he says
nothing I've said goes against the divinity of Christ, and it's like what but
but but I mean they had a pretty I mean, they actually had a
pretty high Christology. It's just people today will kind of caricature them as like,
oh, they thought Jesus was just a man, or he's a creature
or whatever, and it's like, well, I mean really they had a
kind of you know, like as high as you can go Christology without being
quite you know, orthodox, and and people kind of forget that that it's
you know, it's not just like a low Christology view. It's actually pretty
pretty high, but just kind of not quite there. But anyway, the
other thing that I just kind of briefly say is it's pretty difficult to look
at the character that speaks to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and
visits Abraham under the oak of Mamray and says to Moses, I am that
I am, gives the Torah to Moses on Mount SINAI makes the covenant with
Israel, and it looked like that guy is a creature that I mean,
that's just hard. I mean okay, but it's hard. It's hard.
Intuitively, that seems pretty hard to believe, right for me, like to
go to actually read through the Bible and look at all of the theophanies and
and be like, yeah, that's that's a creature. And and in fact,
I mean I think that that's kind of the reason why a lot of
a lot of people just assume that the person that's showing up in the Old
Testament to talk and reveal things and make the covenant, so it must be
the Father. It must be God, the Father, because I think they
just intuitively they know like that that dude can't be a creature. That's that's
the that person is divine. I mean that just it just it's just as
weird. It's just as so maybe, I mean, that's not a super
fantastic argument. There's I think there's other arguments you can make against arianism.
I think he just kind of gets too too much in the weeds. I
didn't really have a lot of time for it. But that's kind of the
argument that I make to Tuggy is just like, that's a that's a thing
you have to swallow if you if you want to go down that road.
You have to say, like, this person is a creature. I think
that's I think that's pretty tough to buy. All right, So you move
in this paper to discussing, uh, you know Calvin and later theologians.
Is that let me I'm looking here? Is that because about the theopoies that
I that I do argue is so I talked about you know, Father Theophany
theology and Son Theophanes theology, and I just point out, like, so
the logical form of those statements, right, like no one has seen God
or you know, Isaiah saw God, Moses sauga. You have a subject
or a quantifier. This is the kind of a logical form of the statement
quantifier or subject term relation seeing and then God right, the object of this
relation. So you've really got three ways to resolve that apparent contradiction. You
could you could what we call restricting the quantifier. You could restrict the quantifier
and say, well, when it says, you know, no one can
see God, it really means something like no sinful person has ever seen God,
or no you know, certain kind of person, or something kind of
like when we say there's nothing in the fridge and we really you know,
of course there's oxygen we really need, Like no tasty food in the fridge
is what we really need. You know, there's nothing on TV, nothing
good on TV. So you could do something like that to try to resolve
it, right, restrict the quantifier, or you could say like, well,
there's different senses of seeing. You could kind of equivocate or just kind
of talk about, well, you can see you can't see God in certain
sense, but you can see God in a different sense or certain times or
not, so you make some distinction there, or you can make a distinction
in the term God and say, well, sometimes the word God refers to
one person and sometimes it's referring to a different person, right, And essentially
the two powers kind of theology, that's what that's doing is saying, well,
there's there's and some of them even put it this way. They actually
put it in terms they talk about the invisible Yahweh and the visible Yahweh,
and something will actually actually say the they're basically calling big Yahweh and little Yahweh.
It's kind of like Yahweh Hagad Doll's sort of like Yahweh Senior and Yahweh
Junior, which you then you look at the New Testaments like Father and Son.
It's kind of like, yahweis senior, yeahweh junior. Right. So
here's the thing I say. Look, if you have a theoph if you
have a view of the theophanies that say the theophanies are God the Father,
then you can't use that solution, right. You can't say it's well,
it's referring to two different people, because it's the Father who's the one that
shows up, right. People see, so you have to use one of
the other two or the other or both, right, you have to restrict
the quantifier or make distinctions about how you can see God. Right. On
the other hand, if you do have if you have a son theophany,
or you just have a two powers kind of view, then you can use
that solution and you could use the other two. You don't need to,
right. So what I do is I go through the Book of Mormon and
I and I point it because Mormonism explicitly teaches that the theore were God the
Father. And so I go through the Mormon and there's all these passes where
the like Joseph Smith translation of the Old Testament, everywhere, all over,
all over and over and over it. He puts in, no sinful person
can see God. No one without the grace of the Mormon priesthood can see
God. Right, So all these times where it's restricting the quantifier right,
or it'll say things like you can't see God with your physical eyes, but
with your spiritual eyes, or you can't see me like you did at one
point in time now at this point in time, you can't. So distinctions
in the way or sense of seeing or the circumstances or whatever. So that
it's always, I mean, in every case, and it talks about all
I mean, there's numerous verses in the in the Book of Mormon that and
the Joseph Smith version of the Bible that talk about the is that always uses
those two strategies to kind of resolve the issue. Never never talks about a
different divine person or anything like that. If you go through all the pay
passages in the New Testament where it brings it up, the New Testament like
doubles down on the language like no one has seen God, no one's seen
God at any time one can possibly see God. He dwells an unapproachable light.
No one has ever seen him, nor can see him. Jesus says,
no one has ever seen the Father. You've never seen him at any
time or nor heard his voice at any time. Like it's just over and
over and over, doubling down on. There's no restriction on the quantifier.
There's not different senses, it's not different times or possibilities or way. And
actually there is that there is an exception made, and it makes an exception
for Jesus. So there's a few passes where it says no one has seen
the Father except he who's from the Father, Jesus. Right, So it's
like, well, the only exception made for who can see God as Jesus.
So anyway, the point being, the New Testament never does those two
things that you have to do if you have a father theophany theology, but
it frequently mentions a second person, which is Jesus. So it will say
no one has ever seen God, the only begotten has revealed him, or
Philip says, show us the Father, and Jesus says, if you've seen
me, you've seen the Father. And there's numerous passages where it does it.
It will mention, you know, say no one can see God,
and then it says Christ is the icon of God or Christ is the exact
image of his hypothesis. Well, so it has all these you know,
you know, statements to the effect that Christ is the visible image of the
invisible God. So anyway, that's kind of my argument that it just looks
like the New Testament clearly has this view that it's Jesus who was the theophany
faith. Yes, exactly, And yeah, all my interlocutors think that it's
crazy, but none of them have any good response to it. Hasker just
says he's agnostic about it. And William Lane Craig's talking about swamp man or
something human. God couldn't could have just materialized humanoid figures, and I'm just
like, whatever, swamp man, I mean, I'm pretty sure, right,
Yeah, I mean it's at least at least Augustine has like angels,
like at least making it. Yeah, I mean an angel will be a
better Yeah, but toxic avenger or something. All right, Well, so
go ahead, do you want to move on this, do you want to
get more into whatever progresses? Yeah, we move on from So I just
kind of yeah, I mean I just argue that, you know, the
capit Ocean sort of view you know it. It gives you a way to
say why in the New Testament the word God just refers to the Father typically,
which is that he's the monarchia, the one source, and that's how
they're how they're using the term and you so you get one God in that
sense. There's one God in another sense, where you know, you can
use the word to apply to saints and demons whatever because of the divine energies
or in the demon's case, not sort of divine energies, but anyway,
the energies because of inseparable operations. And then you can use if you want
to use the word god to predicate the divine nature, you can. You
get one God in that sense too. And I talk a little bit about
kind of ancient views about counting and the idea of quantity and why they sort
of ends up that you have one God in that sense too, So I
just kind of say, in any of those senses, you still get the
result that there's one God. So it doesn't end up being tritheistic. We've
got an answer to Tuggy's issues about the New Testament, and you have this
response to the Theophanes problem, and it makes sense out of things like Basil
saying there's one God because there's one Father, or like the nice Increed saying
that, and you know, jonathanask Is saying God and his Word and his
Spirit are one God. And I just kind of point out, I,
well, I'll have to We're having to cut stuff down, So I'm gonna
end up taking this out of the conclusion here. But what I kind of
go into with my responses to the other authors is just sort of the further
away they get from this orthodox and historical sort of view, the more those
kind of breakdown and they get worse and worse sort of views. So like
Hasker believes in the divine processions like eternal begetting and eternal spiration, but he
doesn't believe in the inseparable operations, and so I just say, well,
then that causes a problem. One of the things I bring up is this
whole three gods issue. People focus on that and they don't think about the
fact that there are other predicates that generate the same problem, Like savior.
Fathers described as the savior, the son's described as savior, but then Isaiah
says, there's only one savior. No one else is a savior. You
know, so there's other things that we want to say, there's only one
of and Gregory of Niss's response in terms of inseparable operations kind of resolves all
of those all all at once, right, because saving is a divine activity,
it's a divine energy. There's roles that each of them have in that
one act, right, Yeah, and it's one, it's one unified is
one one savior, one creator, one redeemer, sanctifier or whatever. You
know, there's lots of p and I point out that, you know this
is it's a problem for all of them, and even the Unitarian, even
Dale Tuggy right has to say, like, there's I guess two saviors because
they're not the same savior. I haven't haven't seen his response to that yet,
but we'll see if he has a good response to it. But I
just say, I mean all of them rejecting separable operations, and so they
all kind of have to deal with the same issue as the tritheism, just
with different predator and then with with William Lane Craig rejects the monarchy of the
father and the eternal begetting and procession. So I say, I mean,
he's got a problem with the monarchia, there's not really one. Well,
it's not this is not super clear to me. Maybe he'll clarify in his
final response, but it's not clear to me what his view is about what's
He kind of says this thing like the Trinity. He thinks the Trinity as
a whole, is this kind of like Voltron Captain planet thing, you know,
that's like, that's the one God. And he says that's assay.
But then also all the persons are assay. But there's not four assay things.
There's just and I have no idea really exactly that works. So but
but anyway, I mean, he's got there certainly is a question here,
like is there one first principle, like one thing that is the ultimate being?
I mean, I guess the most charitable way to read him is to
say that he thinks that that's the trinity, but then it's but then he
gets this question. There's this question like, so why is it that in
the New Testament typically the word God refers to the Father, and at least
in the stuff that we've written so far, I don't really see a good
well and he's acknowledged that well as the point that you made to that.
You know, pretty much throughout the New Testament and throughout the Patristic Corpus,
you have consistent usage of subordination, and so we don't need to be afraid
of subordination. That a lot of people's reaction to subordination is to swing over
into this egalitarian trinitarian view, as if as if that will somehow stave off
all of the subordination points. But subordination isn't the problem because of the church
Fathers teach subordination. But what does it mean to be subordinate? And you
can be subordinate in different ways without sacrificing the deity of the Sun and the
Spirit. Yeah, I edited a guest edited an issue of Theologica, which
is open access, so you can read all the articles if people want to
look at it. But Mark Edwards wrote a good paper for us in that
issue about just that. I mean, he just said like what he described
as like the Gorgon's head of ordination is like in theology, people just like
subordinationism, you know, and he just goes through and he says, like,
look, there's like I think he gives like five or six different senses
of subordination. Is you know, yeah, talk about and he goes through
and he's just like, look very clearly, you know, here's one or
two senses that they're just absolutely affirmed by everybody in the theological tradition, like
all the way you know, up into the to the Protestant Reformation or something.
There's some that are always denied and some maybe he's a little bit more
questionable. But and that's what he says, is just like, yeah,
you don't you know, you don't have to you don't have to get a
distinction in the divine nature or something like that because you have a hypostatic you
know, a causal sort of subordination or something like that. Yeah, I
have a view about this. I think that I think that the rise of
nominalism in the you know, in into the Scholastic period beginning of the modern
period and in Protestant theology and stuff, reak tavoc on a lot of the
these issues. I think I think that what it is is that I really
don't I really don't see any way to make sense out of the trinity if
you're a nominalist, uh in a in a strongest, I mean, if
you just kind of think there's just individuals and words and that's all. There's
no sense in which there are properties or right, you know, and things
like that. I think that, yeah, you probably can't really make sense
out of the Doctor the Trinity on those presuppositions, and you probably do just
get the result that this is three gods and it's all contradictory and it's whatever.
And I think what that did is sort of drove people in two different
directions, which is you get a lot of it's kind of rationalists who are
like, well, let's just give up on Christianity altogether or be unitarians or
some kind of whatever. And then you think you get another strand where it's
like people want to hold on to the doctrum of the Trinity and the whole
tradition, but they can't make sense out of it anymore. And I think
you get a lot of like reinterpreting what the whole debate was really really about.
And so I think that's when you start getting people talking about like subordination
is like the real issue was that, you know, the Aryans wanted to
subordinate the Sun and make him not equal, and we're enlightenment people who believe
in democracy or whatever, and you know, and that's what the fathers wanted
to do. They want to make them all equal or something. And it's
like the stuff about you know, homo Ussius is just kind of like it's
just a way of kind of getting at that issue. And I just think,
like, no, the homo Ousius was about being Homousius. That's why
they use the term. It wasn't it wasn't like secretly about this deeper whatever
about subordination. But I think that's what has happened, is is you just
you've got a lot of reinterpreting of what the Trinity is about because they just
couldn't make sense out of it on their philosophical presuppositions. Do you see a
specific time where I mean, I'm aware of like late medieval nominalism and all
that, but I mean, like, do you think that there's certain is
that would you say that, Well, when Calvin talks about you know,
the person's being awse, would you relate it to that or Yeah, that's
a good question. Actually I don't know. I mean, I don't know
much about Calvin so because he's a nominalist, right, but he talks about
it. Well, I mean, it's hard to say because sometimes there's arguments
that in places he's influenced by realism, but then at other times it seems
like he might be influenced by nominalism. But you know, specifically his denial
of the eternal generation because well some people even argue that he didn't explicitly,
but he does say the son is assa. So I'm just wondering if that,
if that move is in that a little bit about just his theology in
that, and I I think that I think Calvin's probably misinterpreted on that score.
I don't think he I mean, it sounds done. I don't know
if if someone you know out there is like a big Calvin personal play,
like this guy's an idiot, But I sort of think he doesn't really think
that the son is asse. I mean no, I mean I know,
and I know that's exactly what he says, but I think like when you
look at because what he says is, yeah, the son is totally assay
because the father grants him a saity and like makes him asse and you read
anything, that's what just But I think what's going on he you know,
Calvin makes this distinction between different senses in which you can say that something is
ass so there's a hypostatic sense and there's an essential sense. And so what
you know, in other words, what the way Calvin thinks about it?
I as I understand him anyway, And I mean I could be totally wrong.
I'm not a Calvin scholar by any means, but but I think that
what he thinks is that in some sense, the father's assay and the divine
nature is assay because that's all sort of part of this one sort of package.
Right here's the father, He's assay, his essence and his hypostatic property
whatever like is also it's all assay because it's just the father. Right then
the father kind of communicates the that divine nature to the son. Yeah,
yeah, the son has this nature that is. Yeah. That's why there's
debate about it because the Calvinists will say that, yeah, well he didn't
actually deny it, but that it was actually I'll say that he was communicated
to him. But I don't know how that makes actually makes sense sense,
but he will say that like yeah, well, I mean so whether it
makes sense or not is not that's a whole but but but yeah, I
mean, any way, point being, he does make this distinction between you
know, essential I say it, and hypostatic I saity, And he does
say that, Yeah, the Son and the Spirit don't have hypostatic I say
so, if you just kind of, I mean, however, you want
to make sense out of that, if you just wrap it up into sort
of like absolutely assay, yeah in every sense versus not totally absolutely assay,
then I think Calvin is gonna say the Son and the Spirit are not totally
absolutely that's true. Yeah. I did delve into this a while back.
I don't really have that much of an interest in it, but I did.
I got to the point where I realized there's you know, dispute over
you know, it's not an extreme form of it like you're saying, I
have a Sam Waldron is a Baptist pastor and author and the elogian who,
for who knows what reason, lives in the same town in Kentucky that I
do. So I've sat down with him a few times to talk about this,
and he he convinced me to go, like, look at Calvin and
s he because he's because Sam is big on the monarchy of the father too,
and doesn't like all of this egalitarian nonsense. That evangelicals have come up
with, and yeah, and he's a big Calvinist and so he's he was
like like, no, that's not well. And I think he's probably right
about that. Yeah. We have a friend that I've known for many years
that he was Calvinist back when I was Calvinist, and I put he's got
a couple of articles that he wrote that are pretty good. He's Orthodox now,
Robin Phillips, and he wrote some pretty lengthy, well done essays about
whether whether Calvin was a nominalist or not. So I'm putting some of those
in the chat for those that are interested. I think the strongest argument would
be in regard to like the theological voluntarism, which is pretty much bound up
with nominalism, and that would be probably one of the stronger signs that he
was influenced by nominalism. But a lot of these Puritans were also very neoplatonic,
and so they would they thought that, like you could, that the
predestination could also be argued from this sort of ideas in the mind mind being
necessary. So I don't know that Calvin makes are you, but some of
the later Puritans do. But anyway, back to your stuff. I don't
mean to get way off board, But so when you were saying nominalism influencing
this this idea of basically because natures are just particular natures, there's no universals,
do you think that Were you saying that that's like more of an Enlightenment
era when that was getting more popular. Is that what you meant? Well,
yeah, I mean all the like, pretty much all all the big
names in early modern philosophy are nominalists in some sense, right, A lot
a lot of them believe in what they would call modes or accidents, but
they I mean, they're kind of like they might believe in so they might
believe in properties in somethings, but they're like particular Propertiesian theology, you were
saying that you think a lot of Trinitarians are just sort of default influenced by
nominalism, And yeah, yeah, I mean, like so nominalism I think,
I mean, you know, it gets off the ground, like in
the context of late Scholastic Catholic you know, like William Obakam, right,
yeah, but yeah, like then you get people like I mean, so
like h. Luther was a big alchemist and a lot of Protestant theology just
ends up being influenced by nominalism. And then all these early modern philosophers bake
Nd and Descartes and they're all nominalists, right, So I think it seems
like there's a big rise in that in that time period, in in nominalism
and this big like scholastic philosophy and theology. That's yeah, who cares,
And yeah, I think it's very one of the things. What I what
I talk about. This is one thing we haven't mentioned yet in the paper.
So the sense in which there's one God, in the sense of God
meaning thing with the divine nature. That's something I only kind of really figured
out after I wrote my dissertation, and I haven't really written anything about it
yet much, but I kind of mentioned in here is just in in antiquity
all the way through Akham and up into the modern period. The way most
people, I mean a way like Aristotle through Akham pretty much everyone talks about
quantity is they think of it in terms of dividing an aggregate of things into
discrete parts. And then the number of an aggregate is the number of parts
that it's divided or divisible into. So if I've got like ten horses in
the field. The way they think about that is, well, you've got
this aggregate, You've got this clump of horses here, and you can you
know, it's divided. They're separated out into ten discrete objects, each one
of which is a horse. So the horses number ten. They are ten.
And that's different from how people think about quantity or number today. For
people in the stream, I know this, but got loved. Frega was
a mathematician in the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds who he was a mathematician
but influenced philosophy and logic in a big way. So he just sort of
redid logic from the ground up, like scrapped Aristotle and kind of redid things.
And his big interest was in number. And he goes through all these
different concepts, all these different definitions of what a number is, and he
argues against all of them, and most people were very persuaded by all of
his arguments. And his ultimate conclusion is that a number is a basically,
to put it in his terms, is a second level concept, but it's
basically like think of it as a property of a property. So he thinks
that if you say there are ten horses in the field. What you really
mean is there's this property of being a horse in the field, and that
property applies to these ten different things. And so that property has the property
of, you know, being of having it's circular to put it this way,
but having ten things that applies to you ready. And but but the
way that he thinks of that is that you have you have like these logical
subjects sort of that are not identical. So you've got you know, this
horse A is not identical. Horse number one is not identical to horse number
two or three or four, five or whatever, and they're all not identical.
Right, So he's thinking of it, is like and he doesn't even
really think of it in terms of aggregates. He just thinks of it just
in terms of properties. But he's thinking of like the how many horses are
not identical to other horses, right, So it's it's all about non identity,
whereas in the ancient and medieval way of thinking of things, it's it's
not that they're not identical, it's that they are discrete, so meaning they
actually are either physically separated or could be physically separated, or could be like
then they wouldn't have any kind of like overlap, and so you know,
to to some extent, like concretely, that might not make much difference,
but there is a there are cases, so when we're talking about cases of
overlap, it does make a difference. So just as as an example,
like one criticism that people have made of this kind of more contemporary way of
thinking about counting, as like, suppose you have suppose you have a gallon
and a half of water in a container, like in a tub or something.
You know, So take what's in the lower two thirds of the container,
right, two thirds of a gallon and a half is a gallon of
water. So take the lower two thirds, label that A, that's a
gallon of water. Take the upper two thirds the container, label that B
that's a gallon of water. I've got two gallons of water out of one
and a half gallons, right Like that doesn't like that's that seems like a
strangers up. But that's I mean literally, if you take it in a
very straightforward way, like the way that that he talks about counting, you'd
have to say, well, a's a gallon. Be's a gallon? A
is not equal to be that's two gallons, right, Whereas the ancient and
medieval way of thinking about it in terms of discrete parts, they'd say,
well, there's not any way that you can pull a and be apart and
have a gallon over here in a gallon over there. Right, there's no
way to separate them into a gallon and a gallon. You can separate it
into a over here, and then you only get half of B. So
you've got the half gallon over here because you're taking out the overlap put it
over here. You could separate it the other way, but either way you
just you get one and a half. Right. There's no there's no way
to divide or separate into into discrete parts. So whenever you have cases of
like overlap, you you get a you get a different result here between non
identity versus division or separability, right, and what I say in the in
the the way this plays out with the divine nature and kind of with the
inseparable operations too, But let's take the divine nature, if so. One
way to think about it is like the if you think about properties is kind
of like you know, in things like an n Ray view of properties,
as they as they would say, can you divide these properties up right,
So in O there is one way to think about, like you know,
how many how many horses are? There is like how many instances of horseness
can we separate? Out right? And the question is kind of well,
what just what is horseness or what is the you know, the what is
that collection? What I point out is like, well, if you're a
nominalist, if you think all we really have, if you're an austere nominalist,
is just the particular horses, right, right, So there's not gonna
be any right, there's never I mean, there's gonna be ten horses no
matter how we divvy things up. Right. If you think that the instances
of horseness, like the tropes or the modes, if you want to call
them that, the particular instances of horseness, if you think that those are
individuated by the particulars the particular horses, then okay, you've got these ten
separate horses. You're gonna have ten separate instances of horseness, right, But
if you think that those particular instances, those property instances are not individuated by
their bearers, but they're individuated spatio temporarily right, then you might have things
that could overlap. They might be non identical, right, but they could
overlap and share properly. Yes, right, yeah. So in other words,
kind of like this one in the many, right, wouldn't yeah,
I wouldn't just see one anymore, right, it would be potentially you could
have subjects that are logically see but they overlap on some property and on that
way when they would count as just one whatever. Right, So in the
same way that like you know the the think about it this way, like
it start with two gallons discrete gallons of water. Okay, no problem,
they're discrete, they're not identical, they're two gallons of water. Have them
overlap on just like one drop of water. Well, now they're not two
gallons of water. It's it's a gallon. It's a drop less than two
gallons, right, because you don't double count the overlap. Go down to
a gallon and a half. You could have you know, a gallon here
and a gallon here that overlap. Right now, you'd say it's a they
overlap on half a gallon, So it's half a gallon less than two,
right, Go all the way down to just like a gallon plus a drop.
Right, take the gallon over here minus the drop over here, the
gallon over here minus the drop over there, you wouldn't call those two gallons
of water. You'd say it's just a gallon and a drop because they overlap
on everything but a drop. It stands to reason that I mean, if
that's the way we count, right, if you could have total overlap,
then they would count as one, right, And of course I mean we'd
say, well that's you know, gallons of water are individuated by their location
partly, so you couldn't have overlapping gallons of water. But suppose with the
persons of the trinity, you have total overlap. Because they're not material beings
in they're everywhere present and so on, right, there's not point being is
and or also if you just think, well, these are not spatiotemporal entities,
right, so there's not anything to like pull apart their instance of divinity,
instance of the divine nature. Right, So anyway I kind of go,
I go through that, and I just point out like if you're an
austere anomalist or you have this a certain view about how properties work, right,
then you are just going to get three gods and then we are We
see this in church history with John philipponas he does this, yeah, exactly,
where he basically identifies nature's as just particulars, and then when he goes
to the trinity, he says, well, if we have three persons,
those are just three particular natures, and so we have about sort of a
proto tritheism there. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. That's why he
was condemned as a tritheist because, yeah, because he had a particular view
about universals, which is that they're just sort of collections of particulars and that's
it, right, and I and I do think, I mean on that
view, yeah, I mean, you you've got three gods and that I
mean, that's how people thought about counting. And one one of the things
I point out in the paper the essay I should say, is that despite
whatever differences you might find between different church fathers about various points of metaphysics or
theology, whatever, all of them say the divine nature is undivided. And
that's that's the point of saying that, is that it's this view about counting
that it's you know, we say in the in the liturgy, like the
father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one in essence, the trinity one
in essence and undivided, which is important. And actually all of the Meophysites,
uh, their their their view about universals kind of ends up. They'll
they end up saying like the divine nature is divided. Yeah, exactly,
Yeah. I mean if you basically reduce person to an instance of nature,
you would be led to that, and their hostrology leads to that one to
one, right, yeah, and even I mean like Aquinas, everybody,
I mean, any anyone who's sort of vaguely Orthodox, like, they all
say that divine nature is undivided. And actually I was I mentioned this you,
I mentioned this to you earlier. But I'm been kind of reading a
little bit more in a Quinas about some of these things, and I mean
he's very clear. It's some some writings where he, I mean he just
says, yeah, the reason that three men are three men is because the
humanity is divided among them, but the divinity is not divided among the persons,
the trinity. So anyway, yeah, I talk about that, and
how kind of some stuff about quantity in antiquity there. I forget how we
got onto that subject, but that kind of covers everything, the last little
detail of what goes on in the paper. I mean, the result then
is like, whether you're using God in the sense of monarchia or the divine
nature or the divine energies, you get one God on any of those,
any of those interpretations. And there's actually a passage I point to in Gregory
and Asians and where I think that's what he's saying. People have interpreted him
differently, but he says, you know, whether we look to the monarchia,
the urkey, or the divine nature or the I forget how he puts
it. Anyway, he kind of lists these things out, and some people
have wanted to interpret him as saying like these are all kind of the same
thing, But I think he's really saying, these are three different senses in
which we can ask whether there's one God, and there ends up being one
God in all three of these senses. And a lot of these Unitarian arguments
kind of tied to the nominalism that you're saying relate to a certain way of
counting post Frego, which is strictly by this kind of nominalist identity counting,
and you're saying that they didn't really strictly count that way in the ancient medieval
world. Even in Aquinas, he's not counting that way. Yeah, oh
yeah, for sure, Aquinas doesn't that. Yeah, he's an Aristotelian as
far. I mean, even I've looked through since I kind of since this
sort of clicked for me, and I've looked from yeah, I mean,
from Aristotle up through Acam and it's just pretty consistently like everyone kind of takes
this this view. And I think what happens is, just like I said,
in the modern period, people all kind of go nominalists, and so
even if they're counting in that same way, they can't make sense out of
the Doctor of the Trinity anymore. Yeah, I say you're saying now,
right, so the the way with Friga, you get this different way of
counting. So now even if you go back to not being a nominalist,
you get three gods because you just got this different way of counting. Right,
So you just have these three discrete individuals right in the trinity counting that
way. Right. If you're counting by identity, I mean you can say,
yeah, the persons are not identical, so bamed, they're you know,
they're three gods. So what you needed, you need you need a
way to count different things in different ways, and you need a way to
say that there's a way in which God is won. There's also a way
in which he's not one or he's he's you know, triadic, and the
ancient medieval world had ways by which they you know, they counted that didn't
allow for distinction entailing composition or division, right, Yeah, Yeah, And
actually I think Aquinas does a nice I think I've looked through lots of people.
I mean I was starting as far back as the Capit Oceans and going
through like Theodora Abukura and other people, and like up through Aquinas. Everybody
tries to make this some sort of distinction like this. Aquinas ends up just
call making the distinction between what he calls material division versus formal division, where
formal division really is kind of just having different properties, right, so it's
not like really separation or something like that. And so that's kind of the
distinction that he makes to say, that's why we can say there's one God,
but there's three persons, because God is this you know, sort of
first order term that we would we would look at in terms of separation.
Right. The idea of a hypostasis or what they call apositum or whatever you
want to call it, is kind of this like second order logical sort of
concept, right, and those you you kind of distinguished by formal division because
there's things, you know, there's things, there are things that we want
to count that wouldn't be aggregates that you can, right, like logical laws
or sets that you talked about, right, like Aristotle the ten category categories.
Yeah, like those you can't have half of a category. Yeah.
And that's one thing is interesting too, is those sorts of things that you
do count my identity are the kinds of things that don't You can't can't you
know? Yeah? Anyway, so it sort of makes sense that we would,
you know, apply different different approaches in different those different contexts. All
right, Well, kept you for over two hours. It's a great chat.
Are we Are you okay to go to the super chats now? Oh
yeah, yeah for sure. Francis Bull one dollar twenty two cents. God
bless you. Jay started watching you recently. Well, thank you, Frances,
appreciate that. Glad to have you on board. DC Woodworking our regular
buddy and super chatter since three dollars, thank you so much, Justice Byorke
five dollars. I have a question for doctor Branson. How does all of
the quote Christ is our God, language and the liturgy fit within your framework
of monarchical trinitarianism. I hope my question makes sense. I think we already
addressed it, but you can answer that again. Yeah. No, Actually,
one of the one of the things I didn't quite get to is in
the paper I do you talk about this too? That there's also an issue
of that that we treat a representation of something as though it were the thing
that it represents a lot of times I talk a little bit about that.
And there's an interesting dissertation from from someone in linguistics. The title of the
dissertation was I rolled a one and now I'm dead. And she goes through
all this like linguistic data from dungeons and dragons, transcripts and stuff. But
what she points out is like, so that in that sentence, in particular,
right, I rolled a one, now I'm dead, the first instance
of the word I has to refer to me the human player, right,
because I'm rolling the dice, but character isn't rolling dies. And then I'm
dead. Well, their eye has to refer to the character in the game,
right, because I didn't die, And she goes to all these cases
where she's looking at you know, where people just go back and forth freely
between using indexical pronouns like I sometimes to refer themselves, sometimes to this character
they're playing. People will use a person's name, the human person's name to
refer their character, and the character's name to refer to the person, and
back and forth. And I just point out that, you know, that's
that's how we we we that's how we just use language. We treat the
representation as though it were the thing represented. And so if you think of
it as Christ as the icon of God, which is part of the issue
with the Theophanes problem, and that theology is that, then it then it
makes sense why Christ is in the Old Testament referred to as God and Yahweh
and so forth pretty frequently, right, And why I think, you know,
even in the New Testament, they're like in Hebrews, the first chapter
of Hebrews where it says, you know, concerning the sun, it says
God by God hath anointed thee and Yahweh, you know, in the beginning
laid the foundation of the heaven and earth. So it's you know, referring
to Christ as God and as Yahweh. And Basil talks about that explicit and
he says that, you know, we if you have the emperor and an
image of the emperor, he says, you would point to the image and
say that's the emperor. But he says, that doesn't give you two emperors.
It just gives you one emperor and the icon of the Emperor. Which
I point out that you don't hear that so much from Protestants because that's what
that's the theology behind the seventh the Cnical Council, So you don't you don't
get a whole lot of of that. But that's that's what Basil. That's
kind of how he makes sense out of it. So yeah, I mean,
I think you can now that you know, the ariyans Arians tried to
take that, the fact that we refer to Christ as our God and use
it to sort of they sort of did this same like, well, Christ
is our God and the Father's like his God, and it's just kind of
like you know, means different. It's kind of different things. But but
I think the Patricia the capit oceans of view anyways, kind of just to
say, it's because Christ is the icon of God. So you can point
to Christ and say that's God. I mean kind of the same way I
would point to an icon of Christ and say that's Jesus, Like, who's
that, that's Jesus, right, double ow, honeybee. Ten dollars,
thank you so much, petty dollars, Thank you so much, petty.
Appreciate that, doomer or five dollars. Any are the divine energies in any
way identical to the divine essence? There is a sense in which essence and
energy are identical in the sense in which they differ, as is clearly shown
in the writings of the Fathers. Well, they're identical in the sense that
the same God is the one acting, and he's fully present in every one
of his energies, as Saint Gregor Palma says, But if you read the
third Triad, the whole third triad is dedicated to answering this question. So
while I would say that God is fully present in every one of his energies,
and the energies are really distinct amongst themselves, pal Musk calls them in
the third triad section twenty five various realities. And that's why the Tomos and
other documents will say that you have to say there are different realities. You
can't identify these realities, and so thus the realities are not identical amongst themselves,
even though God is fully present in every one of those energies. But
also the energies proceed from the nature of God. But Palamas is very explicit
that the super essential energy or essence of God transcends the energies. So I
would say that we can't say that they are identical to the divine essence.
And also I think the doctor Pinos thesis that's the same thing. Yeah,
I mean that's pretty much fast. Well, one thing I'd say to you,
can it kind of does kind of that issue of like quantity, because
you know, there's when people in medieval times talk about like a distinction,
and they talk about like a real distinction or a virtual or conceptual distinction,
and this sort of thing. I mean a lot of times what they have
in mind is like, are these things that could be separated out, Like
two horses are really distinct, Like they're right, the gallon and a half
of water, those gallons aren't. Yeah, they mean distinction in the sense
of composition and separability. Yeah, and right, So now that the energies
are not distinct in the sense of composition, God has no parts. He's
not composite. Right, It's not like you could pull apart the essence and
have it without the energies or vice versa or something like. There. In
some sense, they're kind of a unity. But but they're not. They're
not identical in the sense we would use that term like they're just like they're
just names for the same thing or something like Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain or
something. Right, But I mean it would also be impossible if you read
one hundred for Dy chapters, I think it's ninety eight to one oh three.
He actually does a bunch of reductile arguments where he shows that you could
not equate divine fore knowledge and divine providence with eternal glory if you were if
you equate an eternal glory with divine divine providence, you would have all these
absurd, you know, originist type positions if you equated them. So again,
that's the thing that goes all the way back to Basil responding to you
know, do you know me? It's exactly assured if you identify all these
different energies. Yeah, Turtle items three dollars. I've never heard this question.
I don't know the answer. Is Adam damned or Pilot or Nestorius?
I would say in the Church's view, Adam was pulled out of para shield
and harrowing of hades. But as far as we know, I mean,
we're not told the ultimate destiny of people, but the Church has did not
receive a Nestorius. I don't know Pilot's destiny. We're not told those things.
But I don't think I don't think there's any reasonably the Nestorius has saved,
which is odd because the Roman Catholics now allow you can be a Roman
Catholic and you can revere Nestorias, so changing doctrine in my view there bm
Max nineteen sixty six, fifteen dollars, great video. Thank you, BMX,
appreciate that. Constantine five dollars. Would you say that the Philly oquay
led Calvin into the argument that the sun is autotheos? Doctor Branson, don't
forget that Target doesn't offer gift wrapping in store. Ah, I know who
that is anyway, someone from my from my parish who I I figure that
was why. So the question is what did the Philly oquay lead Calvin to
say that Christ is auto theos? Yeah? I uh so, I mean,
I guess I would as I understand that. I think the immediate sort
of reason that Calvin got led into that was his like his debates with Unitarians
at the time, and so so a lot of Unitarians, uh, in
that period and on up to today. What they would do is they would
kind of argue like, well, the aseity is part of the divine nature,
or the divine nature is asse or whatever. So we see the Muslims
arguing today, Yeah, yeah, so that's kind of their anti trinitarian argument
as well as the sun's not asse, it doesn't really have the divine nature.
And so I think what Calvin was doing was kind of trying to respond
to them in a way. I I do sort of view it as I
mean, I guess like partly it's it's a like metaphysically serious thing, but
partly sort of a verbal thing, like he wants to have a way to
say that the sun is asse or at least like at least in the sense
like in some sense that would you know, respond to their arguments or whatever.
But I mean maybe in a more in a more remote sort of sense,
the like some of the motivation, I guess a big part of the
motivation for the Philioquay in the West was this idea that that the procession of
the Holy Spirit is something that happens kind of in virtue of the divine nature,
and so if the father and sons share the same nature, they need
to both spirit the Spirit. So I think kind of the way that the
West conceptualizes all of that, it is kind of tied together. So I
mean maybe in some kind of you know, general like you had connected generally.
Thank you for that temple hogro ten dollars, Doctor Branson. Do you
think that the Roman Catholic doctor of the Philioquay caused the distortion of energies such
that they had to adopt later innovations that led to things like beativic vision.
The energy has become dimmer because of the subordination of the Holy Spirit in the
progress of Roman Cavolic theology. After I think she's saying, after like Lyons
and Florence. Yeah, So one thing I should say is I should point
out to people my my area of expertise is really philosophy, and I kind
of I work on the Capit Ocean, so a lot of this sort of
later stuff I just let people know, like that's not my my expertise.
But I think that it's an interesting question though, whether the philioque sort of
leads to distorted thinking about the divine energies, or if it's distorted thinking about
the divine energies that leads to the philioque. So uh, I mean the
reason I say that is, you know, you get this argument that the
spiration of the Holy Spirit basically is a divine energy, yeah, and that
that's just kind of identical to the divine nature or whatever. And then you
so then it has to be shared with the son and and also a lot
of this stuff, you know, like we were talking about before, about
you know, energetic processions, like a lot of the things that the capit
Oceians and others say that maybe sound like the Holy Spirit proceeds hypostatically from the
sun really is about the divine energies, And if you kind of collapse that
distinction, then you just kind of have to say, well, what's going
on here? Is he coming from the father or the son or both or
what? So I think it might be the kind of the collapsing of the
essence and energy that leads to these problems of not being able to figure out
what the church fathers or the earlier fathers were saying. For those that are
if you're reading, if it's hard to get a hold, I think the
Papadocus book is out of prince, but some people might have a hard time
getting it to find it on our kenya okay or whatever yets. There's another
Papa Dooca's book that goes through the same stuff that we're talking about, which
is the one that he wrote with Mayandorff. That's good. And when he
gets up into the sections talking about the eternal manifestation and all of that,
he's got a really good section where he talks about what he calls the triple
distinction, right that by these these Palomite synods, And when Gregory's teaching is
accepted in twelve eighty five, the idea of the triple distinction is there is
solidified and that's meaning the stinction between nature, person, and energy. So
that triple distinction, which is already in book three of John Damascus, in
chapter fifteen of on the Orthodox Faith, Nature, person, will, energy,
and then even says the effect of the energy. These are all real
distinctions. Those things really guard against any of the confusions that you see in
Roman Catholic theology. And keep in mind that a lot of these things you
could source in Denzinger. But literally, if you read literally got in the
first thirty forty pages when he outlines what the dogmas are, I mean,
he goes so far as to say the Holy Spirit proceeds from the will of
the Father and the Son. Yeah, so, I mean it gets really
convoluted. I think Temple hat girl to make the point that it's Doctor Chirrard
in his book Church Papasy Schism, he basically argues that the Phillioqui doctrine was
tied to a kind of ignoring or forgetting of the role the Holy Spirit in
the church, which becomes replaced by the office of the Pope, and so
then it becomes a kind of a situation where instead of the imminent life of
the Holy Spirit and the imminent energies of the Spirit in the church, it's
like now we're looking to the Oracle of Rome, and that is connected to
the rise of the Beatzovic vision at the same time, because you no longer
have the eminent divine experience of God, it's created effects and then you have
the experience of God only in the afterlife. And so I think the things
are connected in terms of the developments. Yeah, I think that's it.
That's a good point to emphasize that. Yeah. I mean, for for
Orthodoxy, it's just you will never see the divine essence, but you can
see the divine energies even in this life. And that's what prophecy is like
when Isaiah saw God sitting on a throne, I mean that was Christ,
but he's it's it's the energies of God, right that you that you're you
know, I mean, just a revelation is a divine action, right,
it is a divine energy. But yeah, if you collapse that distinction,
then you just have to say, well, what I mean, can you
can you see the divine nature? No? I mean Aquinas says, you
only see the creative effects in this life, right, hence the Yeah,
yeah, he says that too. That's why he has to make all the
theophanies just be created right, yeah, and you also in the City of
God he has a section on beativic vision as well, So yeah, I
think there is definitely connection and you only get the vision in the afterlife,
correct. I just think that's the I can't I don't know why people don't
talk about this more, and I just feel like that's the it's just so
problematic as far as our epistemology about theology, like how do you really know
anything about God? I talk about that all yeah, well no, no,
I mean, yeah, debates, I talk about it a lot.
I mean, just like I guess I'm thinking about in academia, like oh,
in academia, yeah, eithan philosophy articles or something like this that you
you don't see. I mean, I guess it's just because people have this
theology that doesn't work, so they don't want to talk about it. But
it's just it's just seems so an obvious. I mean, it's such an
obvious problem, like because it's I mean, it's like, oh, well
that's okay, just divine revelation. But it's like, well, what's you
get in the divine revelation from Gabriel or something like even even Muslims, you
know, like have this. I mean, it's it's like you can you
can feel the problem, like this whole the whole like night journey thing.
It's like not, I think that's not actually in the Qur'an, right,
it's just kind of I mean there's some hints about it. Yeah, but
I think it's just like you kind of feel this, like, well,
if he's if if Mohammed's just getting everything from Gabriel, like how do we
know Gabriel know Like how does Gabriel know this? Yeah? Exactly, it's
just moves a problem backup stuff. And and if you think about natural theology
too, well, wait a minute. So in natural theology, I'm looking
at the created order and I'm deducing uh, you know, the first cause
and the likeness of the first cause and all this kind of stuff. But
what is it exactly that distinguishes supernatural revelation from now theology given the fact that
even supernatural relation is said to still just be creative effects that I'm experiencing.
So what's the difference here? And I think Palamas calls out barleym Mona.
He says that if you're consistent with that, it would just lead you to
atheism because you never get to the thing itself. There's always a created veil
of causes between you and the thing itself. You know, people in philosophy
we talk about this like people talk about the veil of perception. That's a
veil in like John Locke, and it just seems like the same sort of
thing. It's like, you've just okay, now you've got this veil of
perception problem. It's like the phenomenon noumena. How do you ever get to
that God in the newmana realm exactly? Who's so like, Okay, we
can get there, but only in the afterlife, only in the afterlife.
Well, but how do we know we even get there? Only in the
afterlife? If if we were told this by creative effects in this life?
Who sewed the button? One dollar? Jay, would you sit down with
Tim for an unlimited six hour conversation? Well that would be limited that if
it's six hours. Did you see Tim's wife bet five thousand dollars that he
would never convert to Orthodoxy. I don't know if we're trying to work all
this out with We had the Italy pilgrimage between Orthodox Italy in November in my
church, so we I don't know how soon we're going to be able to
organize the situation with Tim in Nashville, but I don't know what what kind
of a setup way. It probably won't be six hours, but we'll see.
We'll see. Pray for Tim. Joseph cash three dollars. How would
you lead to the respond to the argument that real distinction between essence and energy
means that there's two gods? I would reply the exact same way that Basil
and the Palm and Palamas responds to this by saying that the distinction between father
and son is just as real as the distinction between essence and energy. And
so if father and son in spirit don't lead to tritheism, then distinction between
essence and energy doesn't lead to uh ditheism. Any Do you have any comment
on that? Father or father? Brandson? Doctor Brandson? Yeah, father
important distinction, Yeah, no, same thing. You know that that also
kind of gets into that issue of divisibility, right, So if you don't
think that the essence and the energies are separable, right, then they're not
too in that ancient kind of way of thinking. But also I've always thought
that was a weird ideas, because like, I've never understood how, never
really understood how that would give you two god. Well, the argument is
working on the assumption that real distinctions entail composition and division. And again,
if you go back to the Kappadocians responding to you an Omius, they just
don't accept that assumption. Yeah, no, that that's exactly what I mean
about the separability. You don't. Yeah, but but even I mean I
don't. Yeah, I've never understood how like an essence and energy give you
two gods. Anyway, Well, I think they're thinking of it like it's
a lower they think of it like it's a lower essence. Yeah, and
it's like, no, energies are the manifestation of essence. They're the actions,
they're the operations, they're the powers. All of these are different terms
used by Palamos and the Cappadocians for this constantine three dollars. I do not
mean to chide you, doctor Branson. I'm just teasing you. Thank you
for answering my question. All right, I've got doctor Bo's website. They're
linked, and you can watch his lectures over there, and I'm sure he'll
have his book up there for sale or links or whatever when it when it
comes out, I'll post the links for it. For the Four Views book
that's coming out with William Lane, Craig Dale, Tuggy, doctor Branson and
who was the other guy? Anything you want to leave us with, Yeah,
I usually just let let everyone know that that'll We're just now writing all
of our final responses and everything, so probably it won't be published till like
the beginning of next year or something like that. I think through whipfin Stock.
But anyway, so but yeah, no, that's all I have.
I appreciate coming on. It's always fun to talk. Absolutely, thank you
so much. I've learned so much from you, got so many great book
recommendations, and and you're you're really uh an amazing analytical thinker, and I
appreciate that. Combining that with patristics, it's just a rare gift. So
thank you so much for your uh, for your wisdom and your knowledge,
and for giving us so many good references and arguments. I want to remind
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